Call for Applications: BYU Humanities Center Summer 2024 Writing Retreat Deadline: 15 March 2024 Inspired by the productive example of the National Humanities Center, we are pleased to announce that the BYU Humanities Center will sponsor a new Summer Writing Retreat this year at the beautiful Zermatt hotel in Midway, UT. At a location that …
Navigating the Body and the Soul
This post was written by Drew Swasey, a Humanities Center student fellow. During a period of my college years, my ascent of the stairs behind the Maeser building became a ritual punctuated by necessary breaks. The physical discomfort of those moments has nearly faded from my memory, yet the process I would use to …
Finding Love in the Shadow Lines
This post was written by Luka Romney, a Humanities Center student fellow. It seems to me that heartbreak is the constant negotiation and renegotiation between two forces within the self: the first, the deep inner knowing that one is both a deserving recipient and a ready vessel for the fundamental metamorphosis that reciprocal love …
Winter 2024
All Colloquia will take place in 4010 JFSB at 3:00 PM unless otherwise specified. Please visit the event page for more details. January 18 Stephen Ramsay (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) Resilience, Romanticism, and the “Techno” in Techno-Capitalism January 26 Sylvester Johnson (Virginia Tech Center for Humanities) Humanities & Public Interest Technology: Leading the Ethical Governance …
Acting Otherwise
This post was written by Zach Stevenson, a Humanities Center student fellow. It is impossible to know with certainty the precise thinking patterns of one’s youth, but I feel that I can confidently assert that my former understanding of free will was a faulty one. Specifically, I once understood free will to be a …
In Praise of Small Things
This post was written by Stephen Tuttle, a Humanities Center faculty fellow. As a fiction writer, my preferred form has always been the short story. Although I once drafted an entire novel, the long form doesn’t suit me. I love to read a good novel (please, ask me why I love Moby-Dick), but when …
Encountering the Sublime
This essay was written by Gabbie Schwartz, a Humanities Center student fellow and the BYU Humanities Center Intern. I first encountered the aesthetic theories of the sublime and the beautiful in English 292, a course that focused on British Literary History from 1789 onward. Most will be familiar with Edmund Burke’s seminal work, A …
One Year Fellowships 2024 – 25
BYU’s Humanities Center sponsors two one-year faculty fellowships. Unlike the multi-year fellowships, these one-year fellowships will be awarded by application rather than appointment. The fellowship period will begin in the fall semester of 2022. Fellowships will come with a salary supplement of $2,500, a research stipend of an additional $2,500, and release from two courses …
Thresholds
This post was written by Rex P. Nielson, BYU Humanities Center Director. A threshold marks a distinction between two kinds of space. We typically experience thresholds as the common elements of an entrance: the line at the base of a door that separates the outside from the inside. But thresholds may also bear powerful metaphorical …
Words Not Untrue
This post was written by Jamie Horrocks, a Humanities Center faculty fellow. I am scheduled to teach a class on the Victorian novel next semester. Because of this, I have spent the past few weeks stewing over the question that surely all English professors in my position stew over: what is the maximum number …