This week’s public humanities post features the experience of Dennis Cutchins, English, on BYUradio Movies are on the mind: many of you watched the Oscars 2018 last week. The award for Best Picture, The Shape of Water, was an adaptation of a book written by Andrea Camilleri in 1994. Adaptation studies is an important field …
Treating Insensitivity with Compassion
This post was written by Jennifer Bown, Department of German and Slavic Languages, HC Fellow Just last week, a flyer created by a BYU undergraduate student went viral, becoming the object of much derision. A female student organized an event dedicated to Women in Math, publicizing the event with a flyer containing the pictures of …
Please Save Me from Neil DeGrasse Tyson
This post was written by Elisabeth Loveland, HC Student Fellow “I believe in science” is a common mantra these days, but for all its commonality, I do not fully understand what the “science pious” mean by it . . . in fact, given the vulgar conception of belief, it seems to profess a leap of …
Spring 2018
All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00pm unless otherwise specified. May 17 Roger Macfarlane (Comparative Arts & Letters) “Eurydices Deserve Better: Another Look at Adaptations of a Classical Myth” May 31 Sara Phenix (French & Italian) “Bodice Politic: Fashion, Fiction, and Physiology in Nineteenth-Century France”
Thinking through a new Odyssey
This post was written by Roger Macfarlane, Comparative Arts & Letters, Humanities Center Fellow “This book is really based on the Odyssey. All Roy really wants is to return to a clean home and to a faithful wife.” KUER pitched me this pair of sentences out of the blue when I cranked the ignition and …
The Grace of Divine Union
Winter 2018 In this lecture, Andrew Prevot shares some new research about the reception of Christian mysticism in contemporary theology and philosophy. He argues that certain postmodern ethical discourses about the self’s experience of being flesh and the self’s porosity to the other can be traced back to mystical sources in the Christian tradition. Yet what is …
Astonishing Creatures
This post was written by Benjamin Jacob, HC Student Fellow, Interdisciplinary Humanities major I hope you will indulge a personal piece on this week’s blog. You see, this will be my last chance to write for the illustrious (nay the prestigious!) Humanities Center Blog, due to my upcoming graduation. In preparation for this piece, I toyed …
Literary Criticism and Bipartisanship
This post was written by Nick Mason, English, HC Faculty Fellow Much like the literary classic – which Mark Twain memorably dubbed a “book which people praise but don’t read” – political bipartisanship is at once universally endorsed and virtually extinct. In the past year alone, long-revered U.S. Senate protocols were ditched to expedite the …
Reflections on The Great British Bake-off
This post was written by Holly Boud, Humanities Center Intern I have recently started The Great British Bake-off on Netflix (I know, I am late to the game). I haven’t gotten through very much—only the first season, but like many of you, I find it utterly delightful. I love getting to know the contestants through …
#MeToo in the Humanities Classroom
This post was written by Heather Belnap, Comparative Arts and Letters, Humanities Center Faculty Fellow In my junior year of university, I “got woke” to feminism. And it was an aptly-titled text, Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel The Awakening, assigned in an undergraduate humanities critical theory course, that did it. Until then, feminism was to me …












