Public Humanities

This post was written by Sydney Jo Pedersen, a Humanities Center student fellow.    To live is to breathe,  To breathe is to voice, To voice is to speak, To speak is to share, To share is to love, To love is to be.   Language reveals. It shares. It unites.  But, it can also divide.  Sitting …

This post was written by Sophie Hirtle, a Humanities Center student fellow.    For my family, staying in a hotel often means watching the home renovation channel together and mercilessly tearing apart the perky hosts and their design choices. We watch people enter a dilapidated, old home and, within the span of thirty minutes, transform …

This post was written by Coleman Numbers, a Humanities Center student fellow.    Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about maps. What makes a good map? The most obvious answer might be that “a good map is an accurate representation of the region that it names.” The goodness, or usefulness, of a map scales with …

This post was written by Mabel Court, a Humanities Center student fellow.    Two summers ago, on a hike near Provo’s Khyv Peak, my friend turned to me and asked if I thought we would be able to see the Taj Mahal during the Millennium—if our exalted bodies could instantaneously transport us to see sites …

This post was written by Brian Croxall, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.    This semester and with the support of the College of Humanities, my colleague Michael Call and I launched a new initiative: the game of the week. Every week, one video game will be available to play in the Humanities Learning Commons (1141 …

This post was written by Kathryn Charles, the current Humanities Center Intern.    My uncle died the week before my wedding. It was one of my first close encounters with death, and so my grief, although real, was also strange and unexpected. In the days after his death, I found myself spontaneously weeping over cheese …

This post was written by Sara Phenix, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.    The scriptures are a veritable catalog of botanical wonders, starting, of course, with the Garden of Eden and its myriad plant species. We know from the Book of Moses that Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the vegetal paradise initiated them into the …

This post was written by Rex P. Nielson, BYU Humanities Center Director.    Few art restoration projects have commanded headlines like those that swirled after the second-phased unveiling of the Ghent Altarpiece in 2020. Following a nearly ten-year and multi-million-dollar process utilizing the advanced conservation techniques of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA, Brussels), …

This post was written by Gabbie Schwartz, a Humanities Center student fellow and the BYU Humanities Center Intern.    It was 4:30 p.m., and I was getting dinner with a friend at the Olive Garden—which is how all great stories start. Excitedly, my friend told me about her senior capstone, an electrical engineering project in …

This post was written by Rebekah James, winner of the 2024 Humanities Center Essay Contest.   The British poet William Wordsworth saw the death of his father in the rain. He wrote, I do not doubt That in this later time when storm and rain Beat on my roof at midnight, or by day When …