Boarding School Stories
In response to the 2021 creation of the United States Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative, this group seeks to bring together scholars and community members who are working toward localized visions and practices of reconciliation that are grounded in the gathering and telling of Indigenous boarding school stories.
Editing and Publishing
The Editing and Publishing Research Group includes scholars from across the United States who are involved in editing, publishing, writing, and linguistics research. The group is currently focused on establishing BYU’s Faculty Publishing Service (FPS) as a site that can generate data for research projects.
Education for Leadership
This group is interested in elevating the quality of education for all grade levels, elementary through post-secondary, and tying language arts education to leadership development as the most promising way to accomplish this goal.
Experiential Learning
The general focus will be exploring the impact/value of the humanities in the wider world. Specifically, what is unique about a humanities education that equips people to contribute in civic and professional life? We will examine literature and studies that address the ways humanities competencies are valued outside academia. We will also address the role of experiential education in preparing students to translate their humanities training outside the classroom.
Greek and Latin Translation Working Group
This group helps interested faculty and students maintain their skills in ancient Greek and Latin. We translate a Latin text each fall semester and a Greek text each winter semester. The texts that we will work on as a group will be chosen collectively and ideally will arise out of a faculty member’s research project, who also wants the opportunity to discuss the text in its original language, and who perhaps would like to have assistance in the translation process.
Humanities Lab
This lab is focused on the impact of the humanities. This will very much be a collaborative project. It will venture to the frontier of several disciplines, involve faculty and students from other parts of campus, and demand both new technologies and plenty of critical ingenuity.
Humanities Plus Haiti Health Initiative
This group’s project aims to improve HHI’s service and research in Haiti through a postcolonial analysis of their past and current efforts. By extension, other cross-cultural philanthropic and academic activities will benefit from this constructive critique, and a bit more attention will be shown to the neglected nation of Haiti.
Jazz, Blues and Beyond
This group is comprised of scholars involved in the ever-growing body of research on the music of the African diaspora (jazz, rock and roll, the blues, reggae, cumbia, salsa, bossa nova, samba, tango, hip hop, etc.), as well as literature, improvisation, art, dance, film, politics, history, and spirituality as they relate to black music.
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
MARS (Medieval and Renaissance Studies) members come to us from across several disciplines and colleges to share our interest with the historic period from the end of antiquity (roughly ca. 500) down to the development of the early modern world (roughly up through the seventeenth century).
Psychoanalysis Reading Group
Psychoanalysis continues to be relevant to the humanities as a tool for thinking about issues of trauma, memory and testimony. The purpose of the Psychoanalysis Reading Group is to revisit key psychoanalytic texts and to discover new insights into the ways psychoanalysis still speaks to questions of what it means to be human. The group is also interested in developing a stronger foundation of understanding so that we can eventually move toward other theories that build on work by Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva.
Romantic and Victorian
Romantic and Victorian is a faculty research group that meets several times per year to discuss: 1)British literature of the “long Romantic” and Victorian periods (1750-1900) 2)Transnational Romanticism 3)Romantic and Victorian aesthetics theory, and philosophy. Most semesters the group gathers once to discuss the research of a group member and once to workshop with a visiting scholar.
Spirituality and Imagination
The purpose of this group is to convene scholars whose work purports to break down the barriers between “spiritual” and “material” realities, and between theology and humanities disciplines.
Theology and Humanities
This group looks to take up, in a more extensive and reflective way, theological works of broad impact across multiple fields – literary studies, philosophy, theory, culture and gender studies, and more.
Translation Studies
In the age of globalization, Translation Studies has emerged to meet the dramatically increased need not only for the practical translation and interpretation of texts and documents, but for transcultural and transnational understanding and communication.
Women’s Studies Teaching and Research (WSTAR)
The Women’s Studies Teaching and Research Group helps to further its members’ training in contemporary theories and practices related to women’s studies. We schedule events and activities that involve presentations and workshops conducted by eminent scholars in the field of women’s studies as well as by members of the group. We also sponsor visiting lectures and conduct workshops for work-in-progress by members of the group.