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The Art of Archive: Interns at the IEB

This week we are delighted to feature the experience of a number of students who have fulfilled internships at the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (IEB), a research institute connected to the Universidade de São Paulo. BYU has a significant relationship to the IEB thanks to the coordinating efforts of Professor James Krause and others. Students who …

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What Do We Owe to One Another?

Out of all television media produced within the last three years, I would be hard pressed to find a comedy show more intriguing than The Good Place. For those who haven’t seen it, The Good Place follows Eleanor Shellstrop after she dies and finds herself in “the good place,” despite knowing that she’s not meant to be …

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Political Activism and the Academy

“To act … and not to be acted upon” (2 Nephi 2:26). One of my favorite essays on the field of Brazilian Studies bears an unusual and entertaining title: “Brazilianists, God Bless ‘Em! What in the World is to be Done?”1 Written by Richard Morse, one of the most eminent scholars of Brazilian culture and history …

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A Field Guide of Birds and Grace

SANDPIPER; Calidris himantopus. Voice: A single whu. The last time I saw a sandpiper I was in San Diego, sitting on the beach fully clothed and watching those nervous, light-footed birds skitter across the sand. Their legs move so fast they seem to levitate just above the ground, hovering without the use of wings, defined by …

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The Finitude of Winter

I was lied to as a child. In my elementary school classroom, my teacher displayed on the wall a large wheel with twelve smaller circles orbiting the center, each representing a month of the year. They were separated in groups of three, each group comprising a season accordingly: • Summer: June, July, August • Autumn: …

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Drafting Tradition

Greetings, 2019. I feel extremely lucky to be—by mere coincidence—the first addition to this platform in the new year. Accordingly, I’d like to talk about the opportunity that this changing of the calendar presents in the way of traditions, which seem to be the blueprints that structure the December and January months. Whatever the roots …

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Fragile Beauty

December to me means Christmas, and of all the elements of the Christmas story, the one that fascinates me most is the story of the magi. It astonishes me that learned individuals would set out and travel to another land guided only by a star, and that somehow that star would help them recognize a …

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Aliens, Anchors, and How Words Still Matter

I was twelve years old and it was a school night. I was at the dining room table, carefully gluing together pieces of paper and cardboard as I tried to create a diorama on Beethoven for my social studies class the next morning. I had even made a miniature grand piano with stained music sheets …

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Learned Living

Regarding Hamlet, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”1 He was quick to outline that Hamlet’s knowledge did not consist of an overabundance of choices or possibilities, which then made it impossible to choose between them. Rather, Nietzsche surmised that “true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs …