The BYU Humanities Center welcomed Leonard McMahon, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care at Pacific School of Religion, as this semester’s Faith & Imagination lecturer. Title: “Democratic Dispositions: Learning to Live together in a Post-Election World” About our guest: Leonard McMahon has a Doctorate in Theology at the Graduate Theological Union at UC Berkeley, working in spirituality, …
Safe in His Love
This post was written by Aaron Eastley, a Humanities Center faculty fellow. On a recent research trip, I found myself in a place even quieter than the library archives I have sometimes visited. I was on Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine, following in the footsteps of Leslie Norris, a Welsh poet I …
Book Manuscript Workshop 2024
What: BYU Humanities Center book manuscript mentoring workshop Brief description: The BYU Humanities Center will support a faculty member (or collaborative team of faculty members) working toward the completion of a book manuscript by paying two reviewers of the scholar’s choosing to read the manuscript and offer substantive feedback. One of these reviewers will be internal to …
The Very Human Hands of Theresia Ostermeyer, 1936 to the Present
This post was written by James Swensen, a Humanities Center faculty fellow. Last year, I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. As a scholar of American art from the 1930s, I was eager to see the museum’s new exhibitions. I was pleased, but not surprised, to see a photograph I …
A Series of Edges and What They’ve Taught Me
This post was written by Starly Pratt, a Humanities Center student fellow. I sat on the edge of the cliff at Tintagel Castle as the wind pushed salty air into my lungs. To the right of me stretched miles of the Cornwall coast in all its cloudy glory, the soiled smell of the ten-minute-past …
Linguistic Ecosystems and the Creation
This post was written by Chris Rogers, a Humanities Center faculty fellow. The first time I wanted to learn another language was because a new student, Edgar, had moved from Mexico into my fourth-grade classroom in Southern California. I asked my dad to teach me how to introduce myself to Edgar in Spanish (my …
Let’s Be Weak
This post was written by Kaden Nelson, a Humanities Center student fellow. My upbringing in small-town Southern Utah brimmed with anxieties about being strong. My first high school job was at the local Ace Hardware, where I would lug eighty-pound bags of concrete, prickly piles of lumber shipments, and slippery barbecue grills of all …
To Unite or to Divide: A Treatise on Linguistic Variation
This post was written by Sydney Jo Pedersen, a Humanities Center student fellow. To live is to breathe, To breathe is to voice, To voice is to speak, To speak is to share, To share is to love, To love is to be. Language reveals. It shares. It unites. But, it can also divide. Sitting …
Choosing to Build
This post was written by Sophie Hirtle, a Humanities Center student fellow. For my family, staying in a hotel often means watching the home renovation channel together and mercilessly tearing apart the perky hosts and their design choices. We watch people enter a dilapidated, old home and, within the span of thirty minutes, transform …
The Art of Cartography
This post was written by Coleman Numbers, a Humanities Center student fellow. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about maps. What makes a good map? The most obvious answer might be that “a good map is an accurate representation of the region that it names.” The goodness, or usefulness, of a map scales with …












