Public Humanities

This post was written by Sara Phenix, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.   A recent conversation with a close friend forced me to reconsider the value of what I do as a literature professor. This woman has a house full of young children—five total, the oldest only ten when the youngest was born—and, while she …

This post was written by Zach Stevenson, a Humanities Center student fellow “Language is not a small victory. It was out of this last, irreducible possession that the Jews made a counter-world of words, the Irish vanquished England, and Russian poetry bloomed thick over Stalin’s burial grounds. And in a single book one woman managed …

This post was written by Drew Swasey, a Humanities Center student fellow.   On one of my final days in Sweden, I found myself standing on a small, rickety pier facing the Baltic Sea. To my left was my companion; to my right, a lifebuoy on a post. Staring out at the black water felt …

This post was written by Emma Belnap, a Humanities Center student fellow.   A couple of weeks ago, one of my professors asked us to read Sophie Raux’s article “Virtual Explorations of an 18th-Century Art Market Space: Gersaint, Watteau, and the Pont Notre-Dame”. I was captivated by this piece, most especially Raux’s methodology—she and her …

This post was written by Chris Rogers, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.   In my experience, language is a bridge (or link) between so many things. For example, it is a communicative bridge between a speaker and a hearer (or two signers); it is a bridge between generations as parents pass on a functional linguistic …

This post was written by Gabbie Schwartz, a Humanities Center student fellow and the BYU Humanities Center Intern.    “They are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if …

This post was written by Ansley Morris, a Humanities Center student fellow.    When I tell someone I’m an English major, the first question they ask me is always the same: “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” Aside from the instructor who asked me to read aloud on the day I got retainers …

This post was written by Luke Beckstrand, a Humanities Center student fellow.    When David faces Goliath. When Aeneas loses Dido. When Frodo is lost and alone, facing the darkness of Cirith Ungol. In every hero’s journey, there are many moments that challenge them, but there are occasional moments that I have come to call …

This essay was written by Rex P. Nielson, BYU Humanities Center Director, as an extension of the Statement from the Director, which can be read here.   This past summer, I found myself thinking about transformation and healing while visiting a large street art installation in Amsterdam at the newly opened Straat Museum. There, I …

As endings are new beginnings, the end of my term as the BYU Humanities Center Intern coincides with a new assignment as a contributing editor at Wayfare, a new literary magazine published by the Faith Matters Foundation. Accordingly, I thought I might take this last blog post as an opportunity to ruminate on the current …