Public Humanities

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s much-loved “Pied Beauty” (a “curtal sonnet” composed in 1877) fits the season, as spring begins to arrest our attention: GLORY be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, …

The week before last, the Humanities Center held a discussion motivated by the never-ending “crisis in the humanities” and centered on how three colleagues have seen their fields, students, and jobs evolve over the past decade or two. These colleagues – Daryl Lee (French and Italian), Kristin Matthews (English), and Rex Nielson (Spanish and Portuguese) …

On the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the news outlet Ukraine World shared a video on Twitter showing a Ukrainian woman in Henychesk giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers. [1] She says, “Take these seeds and put them in your pockets so that at least sunflowers [the Ukrainian national flower] will grow where …

The Olympics always leave me a bit nostalgic. Thanks to my dad’s involvement with Cycling Canada, my childhood was immersed in sport. From memories of holding my dad’s hand as we manoeuvered through the throngs of people behind the scenes at my first Olympics in Montreal, to members of the national team training in our …

Valentine’s Day has always been, for me, a paradoxical time of year. It falls during my least favorite month, in the dreariest part of the winter with the most snow and ice, and the least amount of sun. No matter what the calendar says, no one can convince me that February is not the longest …

Cruisin’ and playin’ the radio with no particular place to go. — Chuck Berry A few blocks north of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City sits Plaza Garibaldi. During colonial times, the square was called Plaza Santa Cecilia to honor the patron saint of musicians. In 1920, the postrevolutionary government of Álvaro Obregón …

Celebrated poet Jimmy Santiago Baca came to BYU for a two-day visit on Thursday January 27 and Friday January 28. His visit included a poetry workshop, a film screening of the award-winning documentary about his life and work, “A Place to Stand,” an English reading series reading, and an interview about social justice and poetry. …

Such is this steep ascent, / That it is ever difficult at first, / But more a man proceeds, less evil grows. / When pleasant it shall seem to thee, so much / that upward going shall be easy to thee / as in a vessel to go down the tide, / then of this …

Psychologist Steven Pinker ignited a firestorm in 1997 by infamously claiming that music is auditory cheesecake—nothing but a pleasant by-product of the processes of evolutionary selection and not essential for human survival or reproduction.[1] Unlike language, which he believes to be biologically adaptive, Pinker argues that music is merely a technology that humans have invented …

I don’t read fantasy anymore. I used to spend hours on end sitting in my bed with my nose buried in fantasy books. I loved the magical world penned into existence by J.K. Rowling, mythical creatures from Brandon Mull, mystic adventures of Obert Skye’s books, and the epic stories from J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. …