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 …
Fences
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 …
Fall 2017
All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00pm unless otherwise specified. September 14 Roundtable Discussion “Is Linguistics Part of the Humanities?” September 21 Steve Riep (Asian & Near Eastern Languages) “Rethinking War: Unofficial History, Missing Veterans, and “Concrete” Images of (Dis)ability” September 28 **4101 JFSB** Hester Oberman (University of …
Sympathies and Natural Histories
This post was written by Holly Boud, HC Intern “How little the real characteristics of the working-classes are known to those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our Art as well as by our political and social theories.” “The greatest benefit we owe to the …
Negotiating Mortality in Art
This post was written by Benjamin Jacob, HC Student Fellow Recently, I listened to a recording of the Choir at King’s College, Cambridge performing Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor. As it was the first time that I had listened to a requiem mass by any composer, I looked up an English translation of the …
Juan Rulfo’s Journey through Film
This post features the work of Douglas Weatherford, Spanish and Portuguese Department This year (2017) Mexico celebrates the centennial of one of its most beloved and iconic authors, Juan Rulfo (1917-1986). Although best known for two groundbreaking pieces of narrative fiction (El Llano en llamas, 1953 and Pedro Páramo, 1955), Rulfo was also an avid …
On Longing: The Peach of the Humanities
This post was written by Kristen Blair, HC Undergraduate Student Fellow In a moment of particularly moving emotion, William Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet bemoans his mother’s hasty transfer of affections. In his suffering, he says: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, How weary, stale, flat and …
Raising a Glass
This post was written by Holly Boud, HC intern Here I am, sitting on a stool in my kitchen in my run-down Orem apartment eating turkey bacon (God’s gift to mankind). The door of my room hangs unevenly on its hinges. My light is broken. My toilet bowl has a hard water ring that I …
Spring 2017
All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00pm unless otherwise specified. May 18 Marie Orton (French & Italian) “Migration Literature and the Politics of Changing National Identity”
The 2017 Conference of the Modern Language Association: Notes from Underground
This post was written by Matthew Wickman, Founding Director of the BYU Humanities Center I’ve attended the conference of the Modern Language Association most years since I arrived at BYU in 2000. I thought I might take off this year’s conference (held in Philadelphia), but then decided late in the game to attend, after all. …












