The following post was written by Tamara Pace Thomson, a student Fellow at the Center. Recently, in the Stanford Magazine for alumni, I read an interview with Professor Alexander Nemerov, who was a professor of art history at Stanford from 1992–2001 before teaching at Yale for eleven years. He returned to Stanford in 2013 and …
American Food Trucks in the World: Street Food and Food, the Public Humanities and the Humanities
The following post was written by Brian Russell Roberts, a Faculty Fellow at the Center. 14 September 2015 In April 2014, one of the BYU Humanities Center’s research groups hosted Yale English professor Wai Chee Dimock. During Professor Dimock’s visit to campus, she graciously sat down for an interview with our Humanities Center Director, Matt …
Fall 2015
All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00pm unless otherwise specified. November 19 Mark Davies (Linguistics) October 30 Mari Yoshihara (American Studies; University of Hawaii, Manoa October 15 Brian Price (Spanish & Portuguese) Mexico in the Key of Rock: Thoughts on Music, Literature, and Film October 8 Translation Studies Group October 1 Dee Gardner …
Battling Gender Bias
Edith Sand and Victor Lavy of Tel Aviv University conducted a study about unconscious gender bias in teachers grading elementary students. They concluded that teachers, who obviously know the gender of their students, give lower grades to girls and higher grades to boys than outside graders who do not know the gender of those they …
On Scholarship, Faith, and the Challenge of Scale
This fall semester, the BYU Humanities Center begins its fourth year. I accepted the position of Founding Director of the Center in June of 2012, and prior to the Center’s official launch I decided to familiarize myself with a range of new work across the humanities. More important, I felt I needed to learn about …
Environmental Humanities Symposium
This post was written by BYU Professor George Handley, who helped organize the symposium. Thanks to the support of the Humanities Center, the newly formed Environmental Humanities research group is co-sponsoring with the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities program a symposium on September 24-27 on “The Future of the Environmental Humanities: Art, Thought, and Action in the Anthropocene.” This …
Colloquium: Translation Studies
The Translation Studies Research Group will present at our weekly Colloquium on October 8th @ 3:00 in JFSB 4010. The group will present on the state of the Translation Studies field as well as current research. Catering by Banana Leaf.
Why Computers Can’t (and Shouldn’t) Replace Human Communication
The threat of robots overtaking the workforce and making humans superfluous would seem ludicrous decades ago. Now, while still seemingly a stretch, it doesn’t quite hold the same level of outlandishness as before. For example, J.P. Wright discussed his shifting job as a locomotive engineer. He states that the work that was once done by …
Review: How to Build a Life in the Humanities
This post was written by Bert Fuller, who is graduating from BYU’s Comparative Studies MA program and beginning his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto this fall. Last March Daryl Lee of the French Department at Brigham Young University caught me reading Greg Semenza’s Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an …
Prophetic Poetry
When asked, “What is your view of the function of poetry in today’s society?”, poet Mark Strand replied, “It’s not going to change the world, but I believe if every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we’d live in a much more humane and decent world. Poetry …