Humanities Center

This post was written by Holly Boud, Humanities Center intern. I should preface this post by saying that I am spending two months touring the UK on a British literature and landscape tour. Everything that follows is reflective of this experience. This study abroad focuses on understanding the literature of Britain in different eras as well …

This post was written by Ed Cutler, HC Fellow, English Department An opinion piece in a recent New York Times carries a provocative title: “Not Leadership Material? Good. The World Needs Followers.” The author is Susan Cain, founder of Quiet Revolution, a for-profit company that aims to “unlock the power of introverts for the benefit …

This past weekend I celebrated a milestone birthday: I’m 80. Alright, shave three decades off that number, though in some ways I feel 80. Years ago, when a department colleague turned 50, his friends – or, perhaps, sworn enemies – taped a picture on his door of him lying in a coffin, smiling. I believe …

This post was written by Mark Davies, HC Fellow, Linguistics Department Why do languages change? The answers that some linguists tended to give 100-150 years ago strike us as being quite absurd nowadays. For example, they sometimes looked to the physical environment as a motivation for language change, such as the fact that the Germanic …

This post was written by Holly Boud, Humanities Center Intern Have you ever noticed how many water metaphors we use in our language? Brainstorming. Surfing the web. Glass half-full (or empty). First/second/third wave feminism, etc. Our language is saturated … (no wait) … overflowing … (argh) … dripping … (see what I mean?) with water …

This post was written by Charlotte Stanford, HC Fellow, Department of Comparative Arts & Letters When I say I am a medievalist and that I am interested in the study of medicine, I often encounter skepticism—if not a frisson of actual horror. Wasn’t that an age that practiced bloodletting? That didn’t believe in bathing? That …

This post was written by Janis Nuckolls, HC Faculty Fellow As this is my last official post as a member of the first Humanities Center executive committee, I want to publicly thank (even though thanking seems paltry and inadequate) our founding director Matt Wickman, whose vision, wit, energy, eloquence, and excitement for ALL THINGS has …

This post was written by Andrew Rees, HC Undergraduate Student Fellow As I sit in the twilight of my undergraduate experience at BYU, I hope you will indulge me a little nostalgia. To do so, I’ll refer you to one of my childhood favorites: The Fellowship of the Ring and J.R.R. Tolkien’s timeless words: “The …