Think clearly. Act well. Appreciate life.
As a specialist in the literature of Britain’s Romantic period, I had little occasion during graduate school or the first twelve years of my professorial career to venture outside the Anglophone world in my teaching and research. This suddenly changed, though, in 2012, when I began a five-year stint running BYU’s European Studies program. Besides …
Here’s a question: could the mediated essay be an underutilized opportunity to expand the scope of academia? >> Intro music and graphics Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! Huge shout out to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode, and of course, thank you to all the patrons who support the channel. Without all of you, …
If you ask Professor Marie Orton for her philosophy on life, she will answer, “In my family, we say for most any experience: it’s either a good time or a good story.” She exudes a contagious fervor for her work, for mentoring, and for life in all of its complexities. And she captures this fervor …
Over Christmas break, I made the pilgrimage with my mom and sisters to see the latest Little Women adaptation. I found the film absolutely brilliant; director Greta Gerwig reimagines and restructures the story in a way that translates beautifully for a twenty-first century audience. I (a Jo, through and through) began crying right around the …
Happy New Year! Am I too late? What is the last day that this is allowed? I generally shoot for mid-January and after that, I just say hi, so I take back my Happy New Year and just say hi so as to keep with my own set of rules. There are many traditions around …
Though I’ve never been overly enthusiastic about New Year’s celebrations, the prospect of beginning both a new year and a fresh decade felt weightier and more significant for me this time around. During the anticipatory build-up towards the night of December 31st, I felt, as many do, the impulse to impose improved exercise regimes, implement …
As an undergraduate fellow, I understand my involvement on this platform to be, in part, a representation of the student experience and perspective. My peers have been especially articulate in fulfilling that role (recent posts on artistry, career, empathy, and spirituality feel like a decent spread of humanist thought!). But as I recently survived another …
In my first semester at BYU, as I introduced myself hundreds of times to the other wide-eyed freshmen at Helaman Halls, I quickly realized I had never quite figured out how to answer the question: “Where are you from?” My dad was in the Air Force for the majority of my childhood, so we moved …
Overture Though a life-long lover of classical music, I resisted opera for many years. Too elitist. Too stuffy. It asks too much. I mean, how can you watch the stage and read the supertitles and enjoy the already demanding suspension of belief of people belting their emotions? Besides the fact that operatic scenes and characters …
In previous blog posts, I’ve written about art and beauty, and how the two terms are not synonymous. Beauty is relative, and limiting artwork to only the beautiful and pleasant restricts the full range and impact that ugly and disturbing art can have. Art is an especially relevant topic for me, given my role as …