Fall 2014

HUMANITIES

FALL 2014B R I G H A M Y O U N G U N I V E R S I T Y C O L L E G E O F H U M A N I T I E S

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The Sacrament of School Studies

God.”2 On the last lap of the essay she drops this line: “Every school exercise . . . is like a sacrament.” That is a stretching simile and a warming sentiment, but what does she mean? Only this: “The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer con-sists of attention.” And, school studies “are extremely effective in increasing the power of attention that will be available at the time of prayer.” And then this: “Students who love God should never say: ‘For my part I like mathematics’; ‘I like French’; ‘I like Greek.’ They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.” Mathematics and French and Greek are instrumental, but not in the ways we are accustomed to think about them on graduation day. They may get us a job, but their true purpose is to get us to God.

A couple of decades ago I was among a handful of faculty who visited with Elder Henry B. Eyring in the BYU president’s office about the Spirit and the Y. He told us, as best I can recollect, that his father wanted him to study calculus, not pri-marily for the inherent value of the mathematics, but because the attentive discipline of learning it would prepare him to receive reve-lation. I wonder if the elder Eyring had read Weil: “Never . . . is a gen-uine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spir-itual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.” In today’s environment of “enter to learn; go forth to labor,” the idea that the market-ability of a degree might be a secondary con-cern would strike some as scandalous—a very bad investment. But then, as we exit the Egypt of the university maybe we stumble across the mission statement that somehow we missed as freshmen. The statement, approved by the board of trustees in 1981, tells us that BYU exists “to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.” We do many

By Dean John R. Rosenberg

augustine famously recalled how the exit-ing Hebrews spoiled the Egyptians of their gold and silver, while leaving behind the “idols and grave burdens which the people of Israel detested and avoided.” He argued by anal-ogy that from the “simulated and supersti-tious imaginings” of the heathen (Greeks and

Romans), the Christian scholar might distill “liberal disciplines . . . suited to the uses of truth.”1 Packing wisely is good, and not only for those wishing to avoid extra fees at the airport: it is a mark of an educated mind. To discern what (ideas) to carry on and what to leave behind is to turn information to wisdom. Simone Weil was complicated. Raised an agnostic in a secular Jewish family, she was sympathetic to Catholicism. She was fully open to many religious traditions, but some critics found anti-Semitic strains in her writ-ing about her native Judaism. A left-leaning intellectual who recklessly threw herself into the Spanish Civil War on the side of the doomed Republic, she was also a mystic. She was a theorist who dirtied her hands with practiced charity. Albert Camus thought her great; others did not. She died at 34 of tuber-culosis—the very year streptomycin was iso-lated as its cure. Thanks to Bruce Jorgensen of the English Department, I learned of Weil this year. I don’t know what to make of her. However, I found gold and silver to carry away from the inconclusiveness of her life in a remarkable essay she wrote the year before she died (1942), “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of

BYU exists

because before

vocation there is

invocation, and

the “right use of

school studies”

respects the

proper order.

things at BYU—including things that are done elsewhere, like preparing for a vocation. But BYU exists because before vocation there is invocation, and the “right use of school stud-ies” respects the proper order. Weil also reminds us that one does not approach God alone, but in the company of a neighbor, one whom we have come to under-stand through empathy.

In the first legend of the Grail, it is said that the Grail . . . belongs to the first comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king three-quarters paralyzed by the most painful wound, “what are you going through?” The love of our neighbor in all its fullness sim-ply means being able to say to him, “What are you going through?” It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled “unfortunate,” but as a man, exactly like us, who

was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction. For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way.

This way of looking is first of all attentive.

The empathy Weil describes can be developed in many ways, among them the attentive study of literature where right reading may lead to many questions, but none more important than ask-ing the characters, “What are you going through?”

School studies get us a job, sometimes even if we haven’t been especially attentive. Attentive studies, however, do that, but they also help us distill the gold and silver from out of the flesh pots of Egypt, and they bring us closer to God and to our neighbor. And that is what makes them sacramental.

Notes

1. On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr. (Indianapolis: Liberal Arts, 1958), p. 75.

2. In Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Putnam, 1951), pp. 105–116.

P U B L I S H E R John R. RosenbergE D I TO R Melinda Semadeni A RT D I R E CTO R Curtis M. SoderborgE D I TO R I A L A S S I STA N TS Stephanie Bahr Bentley, Jeffrey S. McClellan, Kimberly A. Reid

Humanities magazine is published twice a year for alumni and friends of the BYU College of Humanities. Copyright 2014 by Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.

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H U M A N I T I E S | F A L L 2 0 1 4

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02 | perspectiveBuffalo Bill in Venice

04 | anthologyNonchalant competence—On the Silk Road—Austen’s trusted confidant—Lessons from disappearance

06 | humanities reviewWhat will you do with that degree? Anything you want—Polyglots needed—Farewells, books, and notes

22 | alumni dispatchesChinese immersion—Don Marshall’s love of humanities and students

24 | vox humanaThe virtue of faithful patience

25 | crossroadsParlez-vous français?

Feedback? We would like to hear your views, your memories of campus, or an update on your life since leaving BYU. Please send email to [email protected].

For information about giving to the college, contact Matthew Christensen at 801-422-9151 or [email protected].

BYU College of Humanities4002 JFSBProvo, UT 84602801-422-2775humanities.byu.edu

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When Humanities Become the WorldA study of the humanities opens doors to a world of opportunities, giving graduates a surprising advantage in today’s competitive job market.By Scott M. Sprenger

The Rhetoric of JazzWhat music with a swing can teach us about democracy, civic engagement, and getting along.By Stephanie Bahr Bentley

Gone HollywoodAmerican studies seniors examine the big-studio era of Hollywood and the uncertain future of the film industry in Southern California.

2 BYU COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES

p e r s p e c t i v e

Photo courtesy of Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming. P.69.822

Buffalo Bill Takes the Wild West to EuropeIn the 1880s, just as the U.S. Census was declaring the American frontier closed, William F. Cody took his Buffalo Bill’s Wild West exhibition to Europe. In three extended tours over the course of nearly 20 years, the exhibition traveled to 14 countries. By the turn of the century, Cody was perhaps the best-known American in the world. His show combined nostalgia for a mythic frontier experience with a modern mass-marketing machine that covered the streets of London, Paris, and Madrid with Cody’s brand of American culture. In this hand-tinted 1890 photograph, Italian photographer Paolo Salviati cap-tures the strange juxtaposition of Buffalo Bill Cody with Native American mem-bers of the Wild West cast touring Venice’s Grand Canal in a gondola. This image is part of a digital archive (codyarchive.org) collected and published as part of the Papers of William F. Cody project. Senior editor Frank Christianson, a BYU associate professor of English and a new associate dean in the College of Humanities, is part of the group of scholars curating an effort, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to edit and publish the documentary history of the Wild West’s European tours. The vast archive—of letters, photo-graphs, and show memorabilia—that this image represents provides a rich case study of how American culture was shaped by the forces of high nationalism and cosmopolitanism in this era.

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a n t h o l o g y

LEXICON FACULTY BOOKSHELF

ON SITE

What BYU Humanities professors are reading.

When I Was a Child I Read BooksMarilynne Robinson is one of the best living writers in America. Much attention has been given, deservedly so, to her novels, but her essays are a remarkable testament to her commitment to a Christian understanding of the world and to her exceptional gifts of argu-mentation and language. She is convinced that neither the Bible’s most passionate and vocal defenders nor its harshest critics have spent sufficient time being chastened by its high demands on us, especially in regard to our stewardships for our minds, for our communities, and for the most vulnerable among us.

—GEORGE B. HANDLEY, PROFESSOR OF

INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES

Sense and SensibilityThis summer I got around to reading a book—Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—that I had long felt guilty about neglecting during my young adult years. I was won over by Austen’s wry and confiding tone. This is one quality of her work that film adaptations fail to convey: the sense that Austen is treating you like a trusted confidant, relaying her story and exploring human psychology with humor, generosity, and a sometimes teasing playfulness. Austen’s subtle and sophis-ticated treatment of human relations and psychology is both entertaining and enlight-ening; it ultimately prods you to think about your own thought patterns and actions with a more critical (albeit still friendly and forgiv-ing) eye.

—KERRY D. SOPER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

OF INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES

LEE MOORE, a 2010 BYU Chinese Flagship alum, is having the adventure of a lifetime traveling the Silk Road in China. Moore and friend and filmmaker Galen Burke received a grant from Outside magazine to help others understand how the China outdoors compares to the U.S. outdoors. In June of 2014, their travels began in Xi’an, the terra-cotta warrior province. They par-ticipated in a treacherous midnight climb of Hua Shan, a holy imperial mountain; climbed the holy Tibetan Maya Mountain; and hitchhiked with Tibetan police officers. Moore continues his journey as he begins a PhD program in Chinese literature this fall at the University of Oregon.

Traveling the Silk Road

sprez·za·tu·ra \sprāt-tsä-’tü-rä\noun. A calculated way of doing difficult things with apparent ease and nonchalance.in his lively handbook of ideal courtly behavior, Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), the Italian dip-lomat and writer Baldassare Castiglione (1478−1529) coins the word sprezzatura to identify the impressive attributes of a per-fect gentleman who does all things well: writing, speaking, drawing, singing, play-ing a musical instrument, dancing, hunt-ing, riding, and more. But merely exhib-iting such versatility does not suffice. To qualify as sprezzatura, the courtier’s performance also must convey a certain grazia (gracefulness), creating the illusion that every task or challenge is conquered in an effortless, natural, and understated way. Mastering the art of making things

look easy thus becomes as indispensable as any other skill to the effective courtier. As described by Harry Berger, the goal is to “show that one is not showing all the effort one obviously put into learning how to show that one is not showing effort.” Castiglione’s concept of sprezzatura influ-enced schools of European politics, lit-erature, and art for centuries, and it still resonates today. While modern audiences appreciate stories of grit, determination, and hard work, they also crave contrast-ing tales of superhuman powers and inborn genius. Perhaps these dual tastes reveal something in common with the appreciative audiences for skilled court-iers in Castiglione’s day.

—JENNIFER HARAGUCHI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ITALIAN

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QUOTE

FROM THE WORLD OF HUMANITIES

Disappearance is one of the great and enduring motifs of literature, though in narrative it rarely does what it says.

every year, our Humanities Center chooses a theme around which to structure two large events. This year’s theme may seem odd, as it certainly expresses no latent wish of our own. That theme is Disappearance. Disappearance is one of the great and enduring motifs of literature, though in nar-rative it rarely does what it says. Typically, it motivates something new to happen. Helen’s disappearance (in the form of her abduction by Paris) incited the Trojan War and inspired The Iliad. Moby Dick’s attack on Captain Ahab and subsequent disappearance beneath the

waves drove a later crew of The Pequod, Ahab’s ship, on a quest of epic proportions. The dis-appearance of an epistle containing compro-mising information—a “Purloined Letter”—helped launch the genre of detective fiction. But does the same hold true of disap-pearing languages? Does attenuation or even extinction at that foundational level inspire anything new? The work of the BYU Humanities Center’s annual lecturer this year, K. David Harrison of Swarthmore College, suggests that the answer may be yes, even if in some cases that is only a heightened con-sciousness of loss and a greater understanding of language as a vital, and mortal, organism.

“I do humanities, linguistics, anthropology because they resurrect. You get to resurrect Bach,

Melville, Hemingway. You resurrect them. You are vessels for them. If you don’t share, you

let it die. But I’m resurrecting. That’s what makes life worth living.”—ALLEN J. CHRISTENSON

Professor in the Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature; American Studies Lecture, March 27, 2014

disappearanceWhen we lose a language, Harrison argues, we lose ways of conceptualizing the world—we lose a part of our history, a part of ourselves. Of course, literature and history also teach that sometimes we desire loss. Indeed, some things haunt us because they will not disap-pear. It was King Hamlet’s return that inspired agonizing soul-searching in his son. It was the refusal of Bartleby, the scrivener, first to work and then to vacate his work premises that prompted its story’s narrator to reflect on the pathetic nature of the human condition. (“Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”) And it was the com-

pulsive recurrence of harrowing symp-toms in soldiers returning from World War I that enabled Freud to formulate the theory of trauma.

Today, the humanities are facing their own traumas of disappearance and, in some cases, of things that refuse to

disappear. Most everybody has heard of the “crisis in the humanities,” the partial disap-pearance of university funding from human-ities budgets and of students from humanities classrooms. While the extent of these disap-pearances is easily exaggerated in some cor-ners of the academic world, it is poignantly felt in others. The distinguished guest at another of our center’s general events, the Annual Symposium, has become an important fig-ure in this conversation surrounding reform. Eric Hayot, professor of comparative litera-ture at Penn State, is in many ways an expert thinker about novelty. His 2012 book On

Literary Worlds analyzes aesthetic objects as world-creating (and world-destroying) arti-facts that compel us to rethink the ways we believe we know history. Elsewhere, Hayot has written critically about literary scholars’ ongoing allegiance to old ways of imagining literary periods and of academic publishing’s failure to provide a sufficient variety of for-mats for the exposition of ideas. How might we rethink the humanities and adapt to the needs of our organic society? Should univer-sities rethink themselves? Disappearance is a complex but fascinat-ing subject. Eventually it will disappear as our annual theme, but hopefully not without mak-ing us wiser about our habits, our traditions, and the effects of the passage of time.

—MATTHEW F. WICKMAN, FOUNDING

DIRECTOR OF THE HUMANITIES CENTER

The Humanities Center promotes innovative scholarship and teaching in the language, liter-ature, thought, culture, and history of the human conversation. JA

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Helen’s disappearance (in the form of her abduction by Paris) incited the Trojan War and inspired The Iliad.


h u m a n i t i e s r e v i e w

When humanities students and graduates get the predictable question “What are you going to do with your degree?” they now can say, “Anything I want.” The college asked a decade of BYU humanities graduates about their jobs and used the responses to create an online interactive data visualization (above) that shows human-ities graduates going into a surprising variety of careers.

April 2014

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nathaniel stornetta received his bache-lor’s degree from BYU in April and relocated to San Francisco to work for a firm in a niche area of economics consulting—providing sta-tistical modeling and analysis specifically for litigation. While you might think this is another business whiz kid from the Marriott School, Stornetta’s edge instead comes from his humanities training. “The first thing the firm wanted in can-didates, and what they first saw in me, was a background in math and statistics,” Stornetta

Humanities Grads Work in Diverse Fields

April 3Humanities Center Lecture

“European Metaphysical Empires: The Struggle for Language.”

Ngug˜ wa Thiong’o, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine

says. “But being savvy in economics wasn’t enough. They also needed someone with the ability to read analytically and write clearly.” Stornetta graduated with a dual major in economics and Spanish. He gained his unique skill set as he worked through his Spanish lit-erature course load. He loved the experience of immersing himself fully into the works of an author, such as his favorite, Gabriel García Márquez. This is one of many success stories the College of Humanities is seeing with its focus on the innate value of the humanities and the

ability to transition humanities training into a variety of fields. “We are looking for students who are bilingual—not just in the obvious linguistic sense, though certainly that, too—but also in the sense of being fluent in the language of the humanities and speaking the languages of economics or technology or business,” says John R. Rosenberg, dean of BYU’s College of Humanities. This spring the college posted online an interactive data visualization to map exactly where humanities graduates are going. The

data is self-reported from graduates of BYU’s program and dates back to 2001. The general public perception is an overall disconnect between studying humanities and getting a job in a viable field after graduation. The purpose of the visualization is to provide concrete data about the actual career fields of humanities graduates.

“We have learned that for most jobs, employers are less interested in a student’s major than in who a student has become.”

—John Rosenberg

April 3Jazz Performance and Lecture

“Civic Jazz and the Fine Art of Getting Along”

Gregory D. Clark, associate dean and English professor; Loren Schoenberg, artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and saxophone player; Marcus Roberts, jazz pia-nist and composer

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“in an increasingly connected global society, the demand for professionals who also have sound language skills is skyrocketing,” said Ray T. Clifford, director of BYU’s Center for Language Studies and associate dean in the College of Humanities. At a four-day summer institute put on by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) on the BYU campus, Clifford told scholars from around the world about BYU’s language program. “Every semester, about half of the BYU student population is enrolled in language classes, and BYU offers courses in about 60 different languages.” While learning a language, students have the opportunity to earn a language certificate, offered by the Center for Language Studies. Those work-ing towards the language certificate are required to take a few upper-level language classes and pass the ACTFL oral and writing exams. Spencer W. Liebel, a BYU graduate, says his language certificate opened opportu-nities for him. “The language certificate helped me stand out from the crowd of other applicants who had similar grades and tests scores and helped showcase my abilities beyond numerical quantifiers. In each of my grad school interviews, the interviewers asked me about my language certificate. In the end, I gained admission to my first-choice university.” The language certificate is available to all students at BYU and has been awarded to students in about 70 academic majors. Clifford said, “Second-language ability is a core competency of Brigham Young University—it adds value to our graduates and is a skill set that other universities cannot easily replicate.”

—STEPHANIE BAHR BENTLEY (’14)

NOTE: For more information on the Language Certificate program, visit cls.byu.edu.

Ray Clifford welcomes scholars from around the world to a language workshop at BYU.

June 2014

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Meeting the High Demand for Language Skills

June 3University Devotional

Trent Hickman, associate professor of English

“Weakness into Strength in our Search for Knowledge”

April 25Humanities April Convocation

425 students graduated from the College of Humanities

The college also found that graduates are finding jobs that are recession proof. Even through economic downturns and hardships, graduates are finding employment and staying employed. “We have learned that for most jobs, employers are less interested in a student’s major than in who a student has become: ideally, a curious and urgent learner, some-one whose interests cross boundaries, who generates fresh ideas, and who uses carefully wrought language to share them,” Rosenberg says. “Those dispositions are always in demand because they drive social and eco-nomic change rather than respond to them.” Rosenberg has seen firsthand the eco-nomic value of a humanities degree. He cites a study, published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics in 2012, that found that Americans in the creative class had a lower chance of being unemployed from 2006 to 2011 than those employed in the service-sector or working-class jobs. Humanities majors everywhere are asked, “What are you going to do with that degree?” Followed by the predictable, “Teach?” With some concrete data to display and more and more experiences like Stornetta’s, the College of Humanities hopes that BYU humanities graduates can be empowered to do anything they want.

—JON MCBRIDE, BYU UNIVERSITY

COMMUNICATIONS

NOTE: Explore the interactive humanities data visualization at humanitiespathways.byu.edu.

June 17–20American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Assessment Summer Institute at BYU


FACULTY FAREWELLS

September 2014 July 2014 August 2014

August 18–22Campus Education Week

Humanities profes-sors taught classes on several subjects, from philosophy to lifelong reading

July 11University Forum

“When Humanities Become the World”

Scott M. Sprenger, former associate dean and French professor

SeptemberThe Restored Gospel and Applied Christianity

Winning essays from the 25th annual David O. McKay Essay Contest published by the Office for the Study of Christian Values in Literature, in partnership with the Religious Studies Center

Ray Williams Penny Bird Bruce Jorgensen Alan Melby

DEATHS

RETIREMENTS

dramatic impact on writing at BYU, particu-larly with first-year writing. She has trained and supervised hundreds of tutors, who, in turn, have helped thousands of BYU students improve their papers. She has been active in writing center conferences and has received an Alcuin Fellowship and the Transfer Teaching Award from Religious Education. Perhaps her most precious memory of her time at BYU was codirecting a London Centre study abroad program, where she taught stu-dents about Jane Austen.

BRUCE W. JORGENSEN (English) holds a BA from BYU and an MA and PhD from Cornell. He has taught at Southern Utah State College, Ithaca College, Cornell, and Syracuse. Since 1975, he has taught full-time at BYU, with one year at BYU–Hawaii. His most recent teach-ing assignments at BYU have included cre-ative writing, fiction writing, world literature, and the short story. He continues to write his own fiction. In 1994 he received a Pushcart Prize nomination, an American literary prize for the best work published in small presses. The main study of his life since childhood has been the hearing and telling of stories.

SUZANNE EVERTSEN LUNDQUIST (English) has taught at various universities, including BYU, Portland State, Eastern Michigan, and Michigan (where she received her doctorate). Her last 30 years of teaching were at BYU and included courses in Native American litera-ture, literature and film, and women’s litera-ture and a senior seminar on Carl G. Jung. For a decade, she accompanied BYU faculty and students on service-learning projects among the Aymara of Bolivia, the Quechua of Peru,

MARK PHILBRICK

GEORGE W. PERKINS, professor emeritus of Japanese, died Jan. 19, 2014. He received a BA in Asiatic studies from BYU and an MA and PhD from Stanford University. Prior to teaching at BYU, he was a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia and a lecturer at Auckland University. He also served two years of active duty in the U.S. Army in Fukuoka, Japan, where he received the National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship. At BYU, he taught pre-modern and modern Japanese literature and language, as well as Japanese literary and historical texts, for 33 years.

ROBERT M. WHITE, professor of philosophy, died April 11, 2014. He received a philoso-phy degree from BYU and a law degree from Columbia University. After law school, White worked for a law firm in Houston for six years before accepting a teaching position at BYU. He taught at BYU for nearly two decades.

RAY S. WILLIAMS, professor emeritus of English, died May 13, 2014. In 1969 he began

teaching at BYU, where he taught for more than 35 years in the graduate program for English literature. His specialty was 19th- century American literature.

CALLY ANDRUS was administrative assis-tant for the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages for nearly three decades, serving more than 30 full-time and several dozen adjunct faculty, as well as thousands of students. She was a responsible steward of the widow’s mite, carefully watching over the use of resources in the department. She has been a friend to countless students, a source of strength and comfort, and a listening ear. She was a mentor to many student assistants, and her experience gave her the historical per-spective to cut through layers of bureaucracy to get things done in a timely and efficient manner.

C. PENNY BIRD (English) has spent 29 years teaching composition and literature at BYU. As coordinator and manager of the Writing Center for over two decades, Bird has had a

FALL 2014 9

FACULTY BOOKS

Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy

Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young

The Heist Film: Stealing with Style

Daryl P. Lee

Textual Warfare and the Making of Methodism

Brett C. McInelly

Sophie Discovers Amerika: German-Speaking Women Write the New World

Robert B. McFarland and Michelle Stott James

Piedra de Alero

Mara L. Garcia

An 1860 English-Hopi Vocabulary Written in the Deseret Alphabet

Kenneth R. Beesley and Dirk A. Elzinga

Zion’s Trumpet: 1850 Welsh Mormon Periodical

Ronald D. Dennis

September 11Fall American Studies Lecture and Women’s Studies Colloquium

“Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance”

Ellen Gruber Garvey, professor of English at New Jersey City University

September 18Folklore Founder’s Lecture

“Putting Up the Garden: Performing Community and Virtue in Mormon America”

Danille Christensen, senior lecturer of English at The Ohio State University

the Tarahumara of Mexico, and villagers in Mexico. Lundquist received an Outstanding Woman Faculty Award (from Religious Education), an Alcuin Fellowship, and a Multicultural Education Award for her work with Native Americans.

ALAN K. MELBY (Linguistics and English Language) received a BS in mathematics, an MA in linguistics, and a PhD in computa-tional linguistics from BYU. He began teach-ing linguistics at BYU in 1977, with research focuses on providing support for translation

and face-to-face communication through ter-minology database development, using cus-tomized video playback for language train-ing and education, and testing translation proficiency. He has served as chair of the American Translators Association Standards Committee, president of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, and chair of the International Federation of Translators.

LOUIS HOWARD QUACKENBUSH (Spanish and Portuguese) is retiring after 44 years of service

to the students of BYU. He received a BA and MA from BYU and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a spe-cialist in Latin American theater and poetry and has written several books and numerous articles, reviews, outlines, and anthologies on those subjects. He has directed study abroad programs in Mexico and Spain. He traveled extensively in Latin America and has person-ally gotten to know many of the authors stud-ied in his discipline. He has an abiding love for the people, culture, language, and literature of those countries.

FLAS100/SHUTTERSTOCK

DEPARTMENT NOTES


Asian and Near Eastern LanguagesArabic professor Sayyed Diafallah spent win-ter semester 2014 at BYU, visiting from the American University in Cairo. After several years of dedicated service to colleagues and students, Steven L. Riep passed the Chinese section head baton to David B. Honey. James A. Toronto was appointed senior fellow for Islamic studies at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies.

EnglishBrian R. Roberts, Paul A. Westover, and Miranda Wilcox were awarded Continuing Faculty Status and promoted to associate profes-sor. Kimberly Johnson and Nicholas A. Mason were promoted to full professor. Jonathan M. Balzotti, Mary Eyring, and Jarica L. Watts have been hired as assistant professors. Tara

Brock Boyce, J. David Fife, and Rebecca C. Hay have been hired as visiting instructors. Professor John S. Tanner has returned from serving as the Brazil São Paulo South mission president. Susan Howe, associate profes-sor of English, gave the faculty address at the August College of Humanities convocation. The 2014 Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award was given to three student pre-senters at the 2014 English Symposium: first place: Elizabeth Knight, “Rivers”; first place: Joshua B. Sabey, “Capitalism and the American West”; second place: Bess Hayes, “Reflections on a Superlative Desert.” Sirpa T. Grierson, an

associate professor of English, oversaw the pub-lication of Etched in Glass, Illuminated by Light, a booklet featuring short essays about the English Department Identity Wall written by English majors in collaboration with faculty mentors. Jill Terry Rudy, an associate professor of English, is a participant in a three-year Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to study fairy tales in culture and media.

French and ItalianThe department’s annual French Camp hosted 75 students from all over the United States (over half from outside Utah) and five from overseas. Students spent two and a half weeks immersed in French and received instruction from pub-lic school teachers, BYU faculty, and BYU stu-dents, including an accelerated class taught by professor Chantal Peron Thompson. French professor and associate dean Scott M. Sprenger accepted the job of provost and dean at the American University in Paris. Sara F. Phenix was hired as a French professor. She finished her PhD at Pennsylvania State University in 2013.

German and RussianRussian professor N. Anthony Brown worked with the following institutions to set up intern-ships for BYU students participating in the Moscow internship program: Gorky Institute of World Literature, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Academic Choir at Moscow State University, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, and Kidsave International. He also organized the American delegation for the annual Russian-American conference held at the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Humanities, Classics, and Comparative LiteratureComparative literature professor V. Stanley Benfell is a recipient of a Humanities College Professorship and directed BYU’s London study abroad this summer. He will remain in London through December. Humanities profes-sor Nathaniel T. Kramer is a recipient of the Alcuin Fellowship, an award given to professors who support the liberal arts education of under-graduate students. He directed a study abroad program to Denmark this summer. Francesca Sborgi Lawson was appointed section head of interdisciplinary humanities. Charlotte A. Stanford received an honored alumni award from the Pennsylvania State University College of Art and Architecture. Roger T. Macfarlane directed a spring term study abroad program to Europe focused on classical antiquity and classi-cal civilization.

Linguistics and English LanguageNeil J. Anderson received the 2014 James E. Alatis Award for Service to TESOL. Wendy Baker Smemoe received the 2014 Faculty Mentoring Award at BYU’s Faculty Women’s Association banquet. Mark E. Davies received a large sub-contract to work on a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the United Kingdom titled Semantic Annotation and Mark Up for Enhancing Lexical Searches (SAMUELS). Davies also collaborated with Dee I. Gardner to produce a new Academic Vocabulary List, a corpus-based list of words typically appearing in academic English. William G. Eggington spent a yearlong leave as a visiting scholar at Kyung Hee University, Global Campus in South Korea. The department organized the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) for the BYU site. In this contest, high school students at designated sites all over the country solve linguistic puzzles. The top-scoring student from the BYU site placed 26th (out of about 1,600) in North America.

PhilosophyTwo new adjunct faculty members have joined the department this year on a temporary basis. Justin F. White is from University of California, Riverside; he taught summer term 2014 and will be returning to Riverside to finish his disserta-tion. Derek C. Haderlie will be teaching this fall and winter before he starts his PhD program in philosophy next year.

Spanish and PortugueseMore than 100 high school and junior high school Spanish teachers from Utah and surround-ing states attended the 8th Annual Summer Workshop for Spanish Teachers on June 25 and 26. Nieves Perez-Bazan Knapp directed a group of graduate students and Spanish teach-ers from Utah for the Summer Institute for Spanish Teachers in Spain. James R. Krause and Frederick G. Williams drafted the appli-cation for the establishment of the Portuguese National Honors Society (Phi Lambda Beta) of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese; the BYU chapter is Beta Ypsilon, and Sigma Delta Pi, the Spanish Honor Society, is its sister institution. Vanessa C. Fitzgibbon received a 2014 Brigham Award for her genuine commitment, example, and contributions to others throughout the world and the BYU com-munity. Scott M. Alvord directed the fall semes-ter 2013 study abroad program to University of Alcalá, Spain. Rob Martinsen directed the spring term 2014 study abroad program to University of Alcalá, Spain. Daryl R. Hague directed the spring term 2014 study abroad pro-gram to Mérida, Mexico.

How our fundraising professional can help you make a significant contribution to the College of Humanities.

Matthew Christensen works with LDS Philanthropies, the fundrais-

ing department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his pri-mary assignment is to help the College of Humanities raise funds for our priorities. And right now our top priority is to provide students with financial support to complete international internships. Many of our students want to use the language skills they developed on their full-time missions in their professional careers. What’s more, research shows that inter-national internships are the single most important factor in hiring. Because most of these internships are unpaid, we work hard to acquire donations to help our students. If you’re interested in making a signifi-cant contribution to help our students—a donation of $2,000 will help provide an internship experience—contact Matt. He’ll answer your questions, share student success stories, facilitate your gift, and let you know how your gift is blessing lives. Call Matt at 801-422-9151 or email him at [email protected].

—Dean John Rosenberg

dean john rosenberg

matt christensen

T H E W O R L D

B E C O M E

T H E W O R L D

W H E N

A study of the humanities opens doors to a world of opportunities, giving graduates a surprising advantage in

today’s competitive job market.

H U M A N I T I E S

B Y S C O T T M . S P R E N G E RP H O T O G R A P H Y B Y B R A D L E Y S L A D E

I F YOU READ THE NEWS—or even if you don’t—you’ve probably been made aware of a decline or “crisis” of the humanities.

As recent book titles suggest—titles like Blow Up the Humanities; Not for Profit; College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be; and Remaking College—there are a number of approaches to the so-called humanities crisis. Some want simply to abolish the humanities. Some are nostalgic. Others are idealistic. Still others, like the contributors to Remaking College, are sincerely trying to

figure out practical ways to adapt the humanities for the contemporary world. This national discussion on the humanities has been going on for a long, long time. Reference to a “crisis” goes back to the 1920s. Then there was a spike in the ’60s, ana-lyzed famously by J. H. Plumb, and another huge spike in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In summer 2013, however, we reached an all-time high

in negative commentary, largely in reaction to two reports: The Teaching of the Arts and Humanities


at Harvard College and The Heart of the Matter, an extensive report on the state of the human-ities and social sciences conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Both studies address the recent and dramatic decline in numbers of humanities students in American universities. To give you an idea, the New York Times reported a 20 percent decline in the number of humanities students at Harvard in the last decade. Although both reports speculate on pos-sible causes and solutions to the problem, neither is convincing, especially because they fail to address one of the main con-cerns of students and tuition-paying parents: the relevance of the humanities for career opportunity. I do prefer The Heart of the Matter, I should say, because it mentions three universities with the most innovative approaches to the humanities and careers in the United States—Princeton, Chicago, and, yes, BYU!

THE MA JOR ISSUESo what are the main sources of the problem? What are the pressures on liberal arts colleges and colleges of humanities? 1. Cost, or ROI—return on investment. College is getting very expensive. The job mar-ket is tight. This translates to many students

To remedy that, our Humanities Lab gath-ered alumni data over about a decade, study-ing humanities majors and the careers they led to. We learned a couple of things from this effort: one is that, despite popular mythology, humanities degrees lead to any number of careers. Second, there are some predictable pathways, such as education and law; human-ities majors are great preparation for profes-sional school, including medicine. But there’s also business, management, communications, marketing, IT, and so on. Our majors go basi-cally everywhere (see p. 6). Now obviously, choosing a major is import-ant. But in my view, there is an overemphasis on the major to the exclusion of other skills and capacities required by the marketplace.

WHAT EMPLOYERS WANTSo what is it that employers value? This question, curiously, is almost never asked by people studying the humanities! Some peo-ple find it “crass” (we’re not supposed to be about career prep), or they assume they know in advance and pull their arguments out of their hats. If BYU’s approach has been at all innova-tive, it’s because we listen to the employer’s perspective. And what do we learn? 1. The labor market wants employees

focusing on college as career preparation. We in the humanities traditionally don’t look at what we do that way. 2. Perceived disconnect between human-ities and careers. This is tied to what I call a “language” or “narrative” problem. We simply do not know how to talk about our disciplines in ways that are relevant to career concerns. 3. Lack of a globalizing and profession-alizing strategy. Often, career services don’t understand the humanities, and thus, they don’t know how to align students with oppor-tunities beyond the most obvious ones.

The biggest problem, frankly, is the contra-diction between the idea that college is career prep and the perception—or misperception—that the humanities have no role to play in that. Most students’ approach to career prep is to think about it in terms of the major. This is natural; we all focus on it. And students often pick their major by the name of the profession embedded in the major’s name—education: educator; accounting: accountant; nursing: nurse. The choice of major often seems to provide a clear pathway to a successful career. Where do the humanities fit into career thinking since our name doesn’t align with a profession? The question really is What are the humanities and where do they lead? Many students and parents simply have no idea.

The TOP PRIORITY FOR EMPLOYERS is not your major or even your college’s

reputation. It’s INTERNSHIPS and

EXPERIENCE.

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with a combination of skills, disciplines, and experiences. The key words here are interdisciplinarity and hybridity. This is good news for humanities majors not going on for graduate study. It means that you can study the humanities as long as you combine them with coursework in some technical field. But the opposite is also true: business, tech, and vocational majors shouldn’t be sit-ting on their laurels. They also need to com-bine their training with other disciplines, especially when thinking about long-term career opportunities. The point is to think about your undergraduate education holisti-cally, not just as a narrow specialization. 2. A portion of the hiring of recent col-lege graduates is “major-independent.” What this means is that the “undeclared” majors—or those deferring their choice, thinking that the major is the ticket to suc-cess—are perhaps wasting precious time. To be sure, if you want a specific profes-sion like engineering or nursing or architec-ture, then obviously you need that major. But for many jobs, the major is simply not that important. If you look at data on CEOs across the country, an inordinate number of them attended liberal arts colleges for their under-graduate degree. Another study, by the Chronicle of Higher Education, says the same thing. The top pri-ority for employers is not your major or even your college’s reputation. It’s internships and experience. 3. Less than half of managers find recent grads prepared for work. Now, it’s true, as colleagues often remind me, that universi-ties are not trade schools, but clearly there’s something wrong. This begs the question: What exactly is missing? What is missing are the “essential skills”—those required by a majority of employers. The gap comes from universities not teaching these things, or not explicitly, and employers no longer wanting to do on-the-job training. These essential skills include, among others, the abilities to • analyze and interpret information; • communicate persuasively, using data

and analysis; • engage in continual learning—learn how

to teach yourself (this is a much-needed skill today);

• show initiative (this is more of a

character trait, and it is often miss-ing in students as they enter the market place); and

• understand the impact of a company or organization in a global setting (I think this is BYU’s true competitive advan-tage—and it is highly valued today).

It is obvious that many of these traits and skills can be identified and cultivated in almost any major, even in the humanities. We just need to help students identify and extract these skills from what we’re already doing. CERI (Collegiate Employment Research Institute), a labor research institute at Michigan State University run by Dr. Philip D. Gardner, focuses almost exclusively on college students entering the marketplace. Dr. Gardner analyzes data based on annual surveys of around 5,000 companies, from the Fortune 100 to small businesses, and can tell us what the hot degrees are, what the hiring trends are, and so forth. After years of con-ducting such research, he has come to this conclusion: “There are really only two choices for graduates who want a lot of options: to be a technically savvy liberal arts graduate or a liberally educated technical graduate.” Again, the key concept is hybridity! 4. There is also abundant market evi-dence demonstrating that nearly every sector of the economy finds value in the

“There are really only TWO CHOICES for graduates who

want a lot of options: to be a TECHNICALLY SAVVY liberal arts graduate or a

LIBERALLY EDUCATED technical graduate.”

—Dr. Philip D. Gardner

humanities and liberal arts, whether in business, technology, medicine, engineering, or military. The Humanities+ blog (humanitiesplus.byu.edu) that I have curated for the past five years, for example, has all the anecdotes one needs to feel confident about the importance of the humanities for the marketplace. Here are titles of a few articles shared on the blog:

• “High Tech Needs Humanities PhDs, Say Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs at Stanford Conference” (Stanford News)

• “The Education Our Economy Needs” (Wall Street Journal): A former CEO of Lockheed Martin writes about the neces-sity of humanistic study for engineers

• “A Liberal Arts Degree Is More Valuable Than Learning Any Trade” (Forbes)

• “Google Leads Search for Humanities PhD Graduates” (Times Higher Education)

THE HUMANITIES EDGE

Given this configuration of facts about the global marketplace, we in the College of Humanities have developed a couple of initia-tives for leveraging what we believe to be our students’ competitive advantage. The names we have given to these initia-tives are Humanities+ and +Humanities. In Humanities+, humanities disciplines remain the center of gravity, but we encourage


students to supplement their study with technical coursework, mentored research, leadership roles, and—above all—internship experiences. With +Humanities, we want faculty and students across campus to see us as a valu-able resource—not only for professionalizing foreign language skills, but also for cultivating the crucial skills of writing, textual analysis, historical insight, and cross-cultural thinking. Our approach to launching these initia-tives has been primarily an advising strategy. We want to get information to students so that they can devise a plan early and begin doing stuff that counts—whether it’s for a career or for graduate school. So this begs the question, what counts? Based on national survey data, the internship is the single most important supplement, and more than 80 percent of hiring managers say students should have a formal internship before graduating from college. Given the importance of the internship, we in the College of Humanities have put

our focus on global internships—both finan-cially and intellectually. We have international internship programs in every department, from English to Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, and so on. Our college has a substan-tial presence overseas. In fact, student partic-ipation has grown from 3 to 25 percent over the past five years. We’d like to get participa-tion up to 50 percent. We’ve also put our focus on curriculum. We’ve been engaged in intercollege collab-oration, mainly with business but also engi-neering. We’ve encouraged our students to minor outside of our college—for example, in international development or international business. The Marriott School developed a program for our students called the global business and literacy minor. We encourage hybridity of skills via minors (and sometimes double majors). And language certificates allow students in other vocationally oriented colleges to professionalize and certify their language skills. I want to close with reference to an indus-try that is, in my view, perfectly suited for BYU humanities students—the language services industry. It is currently valued at $32 billion annually and is rapidly growing. At the GALA (Globalization and Localization Association, the major language-services association in the world) conference this spring in Istanbul, Turkey, BYU was the only educational insti-tution present. My assistant dean, Dave Waddell, and I were accosted by dozens of employers from all over the world looking for what they call “global talent.” Evidently, BYU has global talent. They assured me that they would love to hire our students. Most of the world’s major problems to be solved and opportunities to be had depend—and will increasingly depend—on innovative, supple thinkers who can negotiate disci-plinary, cultural, and linguistic divides. From my perspective, if BYU students are not the most suited for this contemporary challenge, I really have no idea who could be.

This article is adapted from a forum address given July 15, 2014, by Scott M. Sprenger, then an asso-ciate dean in the BYU College of Humanities. He is currently provost at the American University of Paris.

Most of the world’s major PROBLEMS to be solved and OPPORTUNITIES

to be had depend on INNOVATIVE, SUPPLE

THINKERS who can negotiate DISCIPLINARY,

CULTURAL, and LINGUISTIC DIVIDES.

FALL 2014 17

What I Will Miss about BYU:Mountains, Students, and Mint Brownies

AFTER 21 YEARS AT BYU, I left the university in August 2014 for an oppor-tunity to be the provost at the American University of Paris. I am sincerely thankful to the BYU community for its incredibly warm and generous support over the years and especially to those individuals who took a chance on me to get me hired and to advance my career here. I said “take a chance on me” because I am not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This surprising fact has been exposed in a number of amusing ways over the years. In the beginning, of course, I was confused by a number of unfamiliar refer-ences and vocabulary (ward, stake, funeral potatoes, and oh my heck). I also often mis-pronounced common Mormon names or cities, which was of course a dead giveaway. Such mistakes and misunderstandings diminished over time, but they do still happen. Typically, though, the exposure now occurs when people inquire about my ability in French, which is followed by the inevitable: “Did you serve a mission in France?” or more confidently: “In which French-speaking mission did you serve?” As you can imagine, students are always surprised to learn, sometimes deep into the semester, that their professor is not a member. The revelation often generates a number of interesting questions, such as one student’s unforgettable question a number of years ago: “You’re not LDS? So what the heck are you doin’ here?” Let me hasten to say I’ve never in 21 years felt unwelcome. On the contrary! I even joke with my non-Mormon friends outside of Utah that I have, by osmosis, become at least half Mormon in dispo-sition and outlook. I’m pretty sure that I’m a lot “nicer” than I used to be. I have a better sense of what it means to live in a real community; I have also learned an enormous amount about organization and

leadership by working under some truly magnificent leaders. A lot of really positive things have rubbed off on me in 20 years. Here’s my top-five list of the most awe-some and memorable things about BYU for a non-Mormon like me: No. 5: Mint brownies. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find these in Paris. Initially—I know this is a bit blasphe-mous—I did not take to these overly sweet and gooey things. But after dozens of grad-uations, meetings, and retirement gather-ings where there was nothing else to eat, I slowly developed a taste for the iconic mint brownie. No. 4: The setting. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I think it’s worth reminding ourselves of this incredible setting—the campus, the JFSB, and especially the mountains. They’re absolutely spectacular. I’ve become deeply attached to this geographical setting, and I know I will miss it. No. 3: Colleagues—in French and Italian and elsewhere at BYU. As associ-ate dean and also as director of European studies, I was able to meet colleagues from across campus, and I’ve developed a deep affection and respect for them. No. 2: BYU’s mission. By that I mean the objective to consider the secular in light of the religious. This may seem to be a bit of a paradox for a non-Mormon, but this aim has been deeply influential on my teaching, my course offerings, my research, and me. I learned about the teaching mission by failing at it miserably. It’s a little surpris-ing, but nobody told me before they sent me into the classroom that I would be eval-uated for such things as “being spiritually inspiring” or “bringing gospel insights” to the subject matter, even to French grammar. I’ll never forget reading my first set of teaching evaluations: things like classroom

management and teacher competency were actually quite good. But I had big black dots indicating poor performance on spiritual matters. The Spirit had decidedly not made an appearance in French 202 that semester. I eventually translated this require-ment into terms that made sense for me. My approach became, over time, simply caring as deeply as possible about my stu-dents, their learning, and their futures. The research aspect of the BYU mis-sion was much easier and even fortuitous for me because my graduate work focused on religion and literature at a time when religion was pretty much a taboo topic in the academy, especially in French studies. Since then, religion has become a hot topic, opening doors for me to a Mellon Postdoc at UCLA, the Fulbright Scholar Program, and several prestigious pub-lications. For me, the religious focus of BYU’s mission has thus been an entirely unpredictable source of my academic free-dom and flourishing. I really cannot over-state how lucky and grateful I am for my employment here. No. 1: The amazing students. I will miss them more than anyone or anything from my time here. I understood the min-ute I stepped foot on campus that BYU is the most unique academic community in the United States, if not in the entire world, because of its students and the incredible gift of the overseas mission experience. I will never forget the 20th-century French lit class that I guest-taught during the interview process. The class was burst-ing at the seams with smart, energetic, and curious students, and the foreign language ability was simply off the charts. It was clear to me immediately that BYU stu-dents were positioned for success in the international arena in ways that no other university, not even the Ivies, could ever match.

—SCOTT M. SPRENGER


EATED at the dinner table, plates empty and pushed to the side, Gregory D. Clark, a BYU English professor and associate dean in the

College of Humanities, watched as Marcus Roberts, world-renowned jazz pianist, was led to the piano by Clark’s 13-year-old daugh-ter, Rebecca. She had told Roberts that she had quit piano and violin and now wanted to study jazz singing, noting she was particularly fond of Natalie Cole’s “Route 66.” With eyes that couldn’t see, Roberts sat at the piano and touched the keys. Starting with a simple melody, Roberts brought everyone to gather around the piano. The improvised introduction led into a beat, and Rebecca found her place. With the breathy voice of a teenager, she started singing “Route 66.”

JAZZOF

RHETORICTHE

Roberts’s accompaniment pushed Rebecca along, giving her energy and strength until her voice no longer sounded like that of an ado-lescent. By the end of the song, she had been carried by the piano to sing better than she had ever sung before, recalls Clark. “He knew the way to carry her in a way that she couldn’t do herself. It showed how a solo-ist can be made better by an accompanist and how we can’t do some things alone—how we need each other,” Clark says. The music created by Marcus Roberts and Clark’s daughter that night is just one example of the powerful lessons found in jazz music.

FINDING HOPE IN JAZZClark’s interest in jazz music began as a young boy in the ’60s. Like most teenagers his age, he listened to the Top 40 hits on the radio. But at the top of the AM radio dial, there was a jazz music station. “I liked the sound. It was peaceful; it sounded grown up.” Over the years, Clark and his wife kept a mild interest in jazz; then, in 1995, they saw Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform at the BYU Marriott Center. Throughout the perfor-mance, Marsalis took breaks from the music to teach. “He talked about how jazz oper-ated democratically, and at that time, I was researching democratic culture, especially how individuals work together,” Clark says.

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The performance got Clark thinking. He made a few phone calls, talked to various peo-ple, and even contacted Marsalis and attended educational events put on by the Lincoln Center. From there, his new interest in what he calls “civic jazz” became a large part of his research as a rhetorician. Clark lays it out simply: Rhetoric is about how people make arguments. One of the large parts of argument making is story. “Story works indirectly,” Clark says. “It puts a per-son in an imaginary experience, where there’s potential for that experience to affect how we think and feel.” The effect of such an experience was explored by 20th-century theorist Kenneth Burke. Burke questioned how aesthetic expe-riences, especially experiences outside of lit-erature, affect people. With Burke in mind, Clark began researching rhetoric within landscapes, giving particular attention to tourists’ experiences in American national parks. The research culminated in his 2004 book Rhetorical Landscapes in America, which discussed the national parks as places where

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Warming up in BYU’s Varsity Theatre, jazz pia-nist Marcus Roberts prepares for an unusual concert—one designed to prompt thought and discussion about the rhetoric of democracy.

FALL 2014 19

Americans from diverse backgrounds can have the same experience. Clark’s national parks book built off Burke’s argument that rhetoric is about iden-tification—using arguments and stories to get people to identify with each other. When Marsalis and the big band came to Provo, Clark recognized that the rhetoric behind jazz music carried similar themes. “Good jazz is made as unique performers find in their very differences musical ways to get along,” Clark writes in his upcoming book, Civic Jazz, American Music, Kenneth Burke, and the Art of Getting Along. “There is magic involved in that, as together they invent on the fly music that none of them could ever create or even imagine alone. They make that music out of the diverse individualities that they come to the bandstand prepared to express, identities that come willing to develop and even change in the process of playing.” These ideas, of course, also resonate with the principles of democratic discourse. Clark says he studies rhetoric and democracy because he has a personal interest in seeing

our country work better, which makes jazz a powerful civic lesson—and a symbol of hope.

CONCERT HALL AS CLASSROOMThe power of music to bring people together was demonstrated at a BYU event in early April of this year. The event brought Roberts back to BYU, and he was joined by Loren Schoenberg, artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, on the saxophone. In a dimly lit auditorium, audience mem-bers listened as Schoenberg and Roberts warmed up on their instruments. Clark, sit-ting to the side of the musicians, introduced the players and invited the listeners to reflect on the lessons jazz can teach: “What can we learn about our lives from the way jazz works?” Clark’s introduction led into a sweet, soul-reaching melody provided by Schoenberg and Roberts. Playing together and soloing in a musical exchange, the artists evoked enthusi-astic applause from the audience.

Intrigued by the unity of the improvised music, one listener asked during the discus-sion, “How do you know when to step back and when to take the stronger role?” Turning to face the audience, Roberts replied, “It’s like a conversation. There’s play-ing the music, and there’s hearing it. Nothing great can happen if everyone steps on one another. Each player has to make room for the others for jazz to work.” Schoenberg added, “When you see jazz, you are seeing two people getting along.” Clark explained that these concepts tie into more than democracy: “The humanities are about people understanding and learning from each other, and jazz musicians do that really well.” “It’s not hard to apply all this to social and civic life,” Clark says. “Watching and hearing it happen in jazz—it’s hard not to. That’s how this music can help people keep believing that they can live and work together after all.”

English professor Greg Clark (center) listens to jazz musicians Loren Schoenberg (left) and Marcus Rob-erts (right). The improvised, cooperative interchange of jazz, says Clark, is emblematic of what can and should happen in civic dialogue.


ollywood. This uniquely American word evokes everything from swim-ming pools and movie stars to

tawdry supermarket tabloids and the obligatory happy endings of popcorn cin-ema. At once a place, an industry, and an idea, Hollywood has played an outsized role in shaping modern American culture and inter-national perceptions of American life. Yet the prevalent cultural image of Hollywood masks certain realities. At the height of the Hollywood film indus-try in the 1930s and 1940s, 65 percent of Americans went to the movies at least once a week. With the advent of tele-vision, video, and digital media, that number steadily declined to fewer than 10 percent by the end of the 20th cen-tury. American feature films are increasingly produced and filmed outside of California. The heavyweight Hollywood studios—Fox, Universal, Warner Bros., and Paramount Pictures—still underwrite big features, but what’s considered the “Golden Age” of Hollywood faded into nostalgia with the passing of the old studio era, when motion

Sunset Boulevard. The seminar culminated in a field-study trip to Hollywood, where stu-dents visited Fox and Universal Studios, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, TCL Chinese Theatre, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “The site visit enabled us to put our the-oretical understanding from the classroom

into a more immediate material con-text,” explains Cutler. “We discovered how nostalgia for the Golden Age of Hollywood wrestles with the economic realities of today, and how movie sets, props, and other traces of old Hollywood have themselves acquired an unusual aura, and function for visitors much like relics of a secular pilgrimage.” As stu-dent Sarah E. Martin observes, “Tourists,

many of whom were foreign, seemed to come in awe, if not in an attitude of worship. Vestiges of celebrities, such as the handprints at the Chinese Theatre and the stars along the sidewalk, were crowded and photographed incessantly.” Despite the academic purpose of the visit, students couldn’t help but find themselves

pictures were generated en masse upon vast studio back lots by a team of writers, direc-tors, and heavily publicized stars, all laboring under long-term studio contracts. With generous assistance from the American studies program and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, senior American studies students in English pro-

fessor Edward S. Cutler’s capstone semi-nar turned a critical eye upon Golden Age Hollywood and its afterlife. Drawing upon perspectives from philosophy, anthropology, film studies, social history, and archival sci-ence, students conducted original research into such classic films as The Big Sleep, His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, and

“movie sets, props, and other traces of

old Hollywood . . . function for visitors much

like relics of a secular pilgrimage.”—Edward Cutler

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For visiting BYU American studies students (bottom), Hollywood chamber of commerce president Leron Gubler (top) and Fox Studios archivist Jeff Thompson (middle), both BYU alumni, offered perspectives on the business, history, and future of the film industry.

proactively, not only to attract visitors but to market their film catalogue and current productions.” Despite the global reach and cultural influence of its productions, Hollywood has always been foremost an industry, and rec-ognizing that was the takeaway lesson for most students. Student Thomas C. Corless recalls: “While showing us many incredible artifacts in the Fox archives, archivist and BYU alum Jeffrey P. Thompson told us, ‘The studios care if money is involved.’ This rep-resents one of the inescapable themes of our trip to Hollywood: money. That is what drove the industry to Hollywood in the first place. Money also led the studios to change from their all-powerful position in the Golden Age to their less-powerful position in the digital subcontractor age. Even now, storage of old posters, pictures, and props is an underfunded operation mostly closed to the public. Storage and preservation is still mostly motivated not by history, but by money.” Hollywood’s diminishing stature in film production underscores these economic challenges. BYU alum D. Leron Gubler, cur-rent president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, explained that in 2013 more fea-ture films were actually produced in Louisiana than California. Tax incentives from com-peting states continue to erode the once- dominant industry position of Hollywood. Student Jane E. Rollins recounts, “I appreci-ated how President Gubler openly discussed Hollywood’s financial situation with us. It’s interesting how much tourism, not actual production, is the foundation of Hollywood’s economy today. ‘They wanted to see stars, so we gave them stars,’ the president said about the Walk of Fame.” “I enjoyed learning along with the stu-dents,” says Cutler. “The seminar was a departure from the kind of course where a teacher dispenses information and students take notes. I set the direction and consulted with students on their individual projects, but BYU alumni like archivist Jeff Thompson at Fox Studios and Leron Gubler at the Chamber of Commerce, who were so very generous in

taking time to provide us unique access and insights, were as much the teachers as I was. I’m equally grateful for James V. D’Arc in BYU’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections, who has built a world-class Hollywood film archive at BYU, and for Professor Cutchins, both of whom volunteered considerable time to make the seminar successful.” While the allure and future of Hollywood may be uncertain, students learned to recog-nize and better analyze the intersecting his-torical, technological, and economic forces at work in the rise and decline of America’s most recognized cultural product. Such inter-disciplinary perspective is the draw for many American studies majors. Student Sarah A. Flinders explains: “With history, sociology, anthropology, and other subjects included [in American studies], I didn’t feel as specialized as I did when I considered other majors. I had the independence I needed to find things I liked to do and learn. I was able to personalize my undergraduate experience without feeling like I sacrificed any learning opportunities or pigeonholed myself into one discipline.”

susceptible to the Hollywood aura. “At Fox Studios, one of the archivists pulled out one of the Wilsons used in the film Cast Away,” recalls student A. Alexis Oldham. “There was a chill among all of us, because here before us was a ‘real’ Wilson actually used in the film. However, even though this volleyball is a famous prop recognized around the world, it remains simply a volleyball.” Film scholar and English professor Dennis R. Cutchins, who accompanied the field study, pointed out that for years studios failed to realize the social “value” associated with such props, which many studios had simply discarded or sold off after production: “Universal was the first studio to recognize that people will pay to see this stuff. Today, the studios use props

“One of the best things about being a photo

archivist at a movie studio is that I get

exposed daily to so many of the things that

interest me—architecture, history, music,

literature, and art (almost every film con-

tains at least a couple of those elements).

Being familiar with Cellini and Michelangelo,

having read the Inferno and The Grapes of

Wrath, and knowing the music of Jascha

Heifetz and Stephen Foster (all subjects

of 20th Century Fox films) has given me

the background to understand and appre-

ciate the context and content of one of

the nation’s largest film-related archives.

In addition, my humanities education has

also made me more productive: I’m always

motivated by the anticipation of what I’ll

discover in the course of my research. Had

I majored in another field, I would certainly

be less effective and would not enjoy work-

ing with the collection as much as I do.”

—JEFFREY P. THOMPSON, FOX STUDIOS PHOTO ARCHIVIST

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PROFILE

a l u m n i d i s p a t c h e s

As general counsel for General Motors in China, and later as an assistant U.S. trade representa-tive, Tim Stratford (above, right) shared the stage with politicians and diplomats. His BYU training in Chinese and philosophy has shaped his career.

as a young man, Tim Stratford was like many BYU students. After starting his college education, he was called to serve a mission. But his two-year service in the China Hong Kong Mission would forever change the direc-tion of his life. After his mission, Stratford returned to BYU with a strong interest in Chinese lan-guage and culture, and he decided to major in Chinese and philosophy. Upon his graduation from BYU, he enrolled at—and later gradu-ated from—Harvard Law School. Stratford has since become a notable player in the realm of international law and Chinese relations. Since 1982 Stratford has lived and

Chinese Connection

You’re going to have to work hard and be flu-ent. . . . If you can negotiate and read Chinese legal documents, you will really set yourself apart in the job market.” Stratford has done just that. As an alum-nus of BYU and the College of Humanities, Stratford has used his education, his skills, and his experience to become globally recog-nized as an expert on international law and Chinese relations.

—STEPHANIE BAHR BENTLEY (’14)

“We ask the Lord, ‘What should I do with my life? What would You like me to do?’ And the answer is keep His command-ments and seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion (see D&C 11:6). I believe that my humanities education has been very important in pre-paring me to participate in this great work.”

—Tim Stratford

worked continuously in China, except for the five years he spent in Washington, DC, in gov-ernment service. After working at a law firm and then in commercial affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Stratford was called in 1992 to serve as president of the Taiwan Taichung Mission. After his mission presidency, he was a law partner for Coudert Brothers in Beijing, general counsel for General Motors in China, and then the assistant U.S. trade representa-tive for U.S.-China relations. He currently is a partner at Covington & Burling LLP, manag-ing the Beijing office. As Stratford has lived many years in China, he has watched the country undergo major changes. “We were able to witness what I think is the greatest transformation of a large group of people that has ever taken place in the history of this world. Never before have so many people changed in so many profound ways so rapidly as we have seen in China in the last 30 years,” Stratford said in a 2013 lec-ture at BYU. “Today a degree in Chinese is more valuable than ever before.” In addition to the obvious value of his Chinese major for his career, Stratford explained to the BYU audience how his philos-ophy major has benefited his life: “Philosophy helps you understand more clearly what peo-ple really think. It teaches you to listen, to read carefully, to ask questions, to define your terms, and to recognize the assumptions that are being made in a conversation. Philosophy is extremely helpful to you whenever the task at hand involves understanding and reconcil-ing differences in opinion, which happens fre-quently in the business world.” As China becomes a greater force in the market, Stratford encourages those studying Chinese, or any language, to professionalize their skills. “To those of you who are studying Chinese, I would say that if you really want to use it, you’re going to have to get good at it.

Humanities alum Tim Stratford has used his education, skills, and experience to become globally recognized as an expert on international law and Chinese relations.

FALL 2014 23

By John Sorenson

remember the first time you sat in a very large class, probably during the first semester of your freshman year? For me it was 1982, Humanities 101, in the JKB theater with approximately 150 students. Among my thoughts that first day was, “Wow, there are a lot of people here for just one class, so either this is a very interesting and exciting elective, or it is one of those courses highly sought after because of the outstanding professor!” Both proved to be true as I met and learned from Donald R. Marshall. I can still visualize that first day. Within 10 minutes of his opening presentation, Dr. Marshall said, “I am really looking forward to getting to know of all of you.” I glanced around at the vast audience with a slight bit of skepticism, but he quickly followed with, “Seriously, I am planning—if you will allow me—to take your photo, then memorize your name and face, and hopefully have the oppor-tunity of getting to know every one of you personally.” I was not only stunned but deeply impressed. Furthermore, I soon learned that he wanted this kind of relationship with every student in every class, and it had been that way for years! Don loved the humanities, but every time he taught I had the feeling he loved his students equally, if not more. Don’s approach to teaching made the humanities come alive in a way I didn’t think possible. He taught in such a way that you soon had a yearning to learn all you could about the world’s greatest composers, musicians, poets, painters, writers, architects, artists, and sculp-tors. When I watched Don teach, I felt he not only admired but truly cared about each per-son he taught us about. He made each come alive as if they were practically his personal friends. Through his gentle and passionate

RETROSPECTIVES

Alumni tell how BYU and the humanities have made a difference.

Share Memories, Earn $25How did a study of humanities at BYU affect your life? Please share your story on one of the topics below in 50 to 200 words, and we will consider it for publi-cation in a future issue of the magazine. If we publish your story, we will pay you $25. Send your story to [email protected]. Submissions may be edited for length, grammar, appropriateness, and clarity.

• Classes that made a difference• Teachers who made a difference• Books that made a difference• Ideas that made a difference• The humanities in my life

energy, he effectively and sweetly opened a vast world of art, literature, music, film, and culture to the lifelong appreciation of genera-tions of students. One important, lasting representation of his commitment was his leadership in the focused growth of BYU’s International Cinema. Don put in countless hours in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, traveling the world and creating connections to bring international films to BYU. This endeavor has resulted in the world’s largest and longest-running uni-versity foreign film program (see ic.byu.edu). I believe Don worked so tirelessly on this program because he cared so much about the students in his classes. When I was in his class I felt he was teaching and sharing with me because he cared about me. Don closely fol-lowed the admonition in Mosiah 2:17 by kindly and sincerely inviting me and countless others into the fascinating world of the humanities.

Loving the Humanities and His Students

The longtime director of BYU's International Cinema, Don Marshall (shown here with his wife, Jean) loved teaching and sharing the humanities almost as much as he loved his students.

Happy Birthday to Us!Light up the candles and bring on the cake—the College of Humanities will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2015. To recognize this milestone, we will publish a commemorative issue of the magazine, create a special exhibit in the Education in Zion gallery on BYU campus, and host several celebratory events throughout the year. You can help us create a festive occasion that will be fun for all. What would you like to read about in a commem-orative issue of the magazine? What sort of anniversary events would you enjoy attend-ing? Put on your party hat, and send your ideas to [email protected].

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v o x h u m a n a

By Thomas B. Griffith

for the past year, I have been involved in a project that brings together believing LDS scholars and those whose faith in the Restoration is wavering. The Temple and Observatory Group, whose name reflects the complementary means of approaching truth provided by faith and reason, has sponsored small-group gatherings where those with questions can discuss their concerns with faithful scholars like Richard L. and Claudia L. Bushman, Terryl L. and Fiona Givens, and others.1 As more of an observer than a par-ticipant in these gatherings, I have detected a commonality among many of those whose faith has been shaken. Somewhere along the way, they adopted the view—and it became part of the foundation of their faith in the Restoration—that Church leaders are infalli-ble in their teaching and administration and near perfect in their discipleship. Of course, the problem with such a view is that it is simply not true. The most cursory study of Church history shows that the Lord has always used mere mortals to carry out His work, and mortals make mistakes (as President Dieter F. Uchtdorf,2 Elder Jeffrey R. Holland,3 and Elder D. Todd Christofferson4 have each stressed in recent general conference addresses). In our spring issue, I tried to make the case that holding to the values of the U.S. Constitution calls for a close reading of its text: the type of reading learned in the study of the humanities.5 That skill is also vital to discipleship, especially in a time coming to be known as the Secular Age.6 A close read-ing of the scriptures confirms that the Lord works through imperfect people and also puts us on notice to avoid the trap of resting our faith solely on them. For example, the first commandment the Lord directed to the restored Church, given on the day the Church was organized, is familiar to Latter-day Saints: “Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all [the prophet’s] words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me; For his word ye shall receive, as

all patience and faith

if from mine own mouth” (D&C 21:4–5). We have been effective in teaching this funda-mental command, which is simply stated in the words of the popular Primary song “Follow the Prophet.” But there is more to what the Lord said. A close read of the revelation shows that the concluding clause to the Lord’s command to follow the prophet contains a cautionary note that to do so takes “all patience and faith” (D&C 21:5). Why would the Lord counsel us that it takes “all patience and faith” to follow a leader He has called? Perhaps because He knows that it is hard to hear His perfect voice through an imperfect human. “All patience and faith” is a mark of the spiritual maturity needed to see past leaders’ shortcomings and find in their words the Lord’s direction for us. Yet frequently we teach lessons about follow-ing the prophet without including this part of the revelation. But how the Lord works with and through His leaders—and us—is rarely as simple and never as tidy as we may want it to be: His pattern is to use “the weak things of the earth” (D&C 124:1).

It is natural to want an easy path to belief, to yearn for the certitude that would come were the Lord to speak to us through perfect leaders. But offering an easy path has never been the Lord’s way. Seeing “through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12) is the nature of our human condition for a reason. BYU human-ities professor George B. Handley put it this way: “The real challenge is . . . to hear tran-scendent truth expressed through a human. . . . I am much more interested in learning how God works through frail, weak, particularized human agents, through the limitations of their time, place, language, and understand-ing. That is the miracle of revelation. . . . It is challenging and fulfilling work to see and even love the human and weak vessels through whom inspiration comes.”7 It takes patience and faith to develop the attributes mortality is intended to provide. Patience and faith take hard work, but as former Young Women gen-eral president Susan W. Tanner taught us so well, we can do hard things.8

Thomas B. Griffith, a BYU humanities gradu-ate, is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He previously served as BYU general counsel and as legal counsel for the U.S. Senate.

Notes

1. M. Sue Bergin’s excellent article in the spring 2014 BYU Magazine, “Keeping the Faith?” (pp. 22–23), describes positive ways to approach honest and sincere doubt. The Givenses’ recently published book The Crucible of Doubt (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2014) is an extraordinary discussion of the role of doubt in the life of a believer.

2. “Come, Join with Us,” Ensign, November 2013.3. “Lord, I Believe,” Ensign, May 2013.4. “ The Doctrine of Christ,” Ensign, May 2012.5. “A Close Read,” Humanities, Spring 2014, p. 23.6. See Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard, 2007).7. “Balancing Intellect and Faith,” Home Waters (blog),

June 6, 2013, patheos.com/blogs/homewaters /2013/06/balancing-intellect-and-faith

8. See “For the Strength of You,” Ensign, October 2007.

“All patience and faith” is a mark of the spiritual maturity needed to see past leaders’ shortcomings and find in their words the Lord’s direction for us.

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To check your answers, visit us online at humanities.byu.edu/magazine.

Français, S’il Vous Plaît By Fred Piscop

ACROSS 1 French Nobelist Pierre or

Marie 6 With, in Lyon 10 “All _ _” (jazz standard) 14 Before, in Bordeaux 15 Oh _ _, outcry in Orléans 16 Russian river to the Caspian

Sea 17 French city where the treaty

ending WWI was signed 19 Raja’s mate 20 Motorist-aiding org. 21 Zamboni’s milieu 22 Flowery Month, in Marseille 24 Your, in Normandie 25 Diction problem 26 Marathon legend Waitz 28 Out of kilter 30 Know, in Nice 33 Face-to-face exam 34 Verdi title character 35 Not fooled by

38 Little, in Lille 39 What French students call

Provo’s mountain symbol 40 Charged particle 41 Bit of Watergate evidence 43 Well, in Cannes 44 Be, in Brest 45 Move up the ladder 47 “Shhh!” 49 Also, in Aix-en-Provence 51 Recipe amounts 52 Ltr. addenda 53 French friend 56 Gardener’s tool 57 NRC predecessor 60 Study a script 62 Beheaded Marie 65 Rubik who invented the cube 66 Fateful day for Caesar 67 Dickens’s “The Mystery of

Edwin _” 68 Air France speedsters, once

69 Not all 70 Paris river

DOWN 1 “How’s it going?” in Le Havre 2 Pigmented part of the eye 3 _ avis (one of a kind) 4 Helpful connections 5 Sells online 6 Go, in Grenoble 7 Actor Kilmer 8 Grades K-6, abbr. 9 “Mi _ es su _” 10 Joint possessive 11 “Liberté, Égalité, _” 12 Early French impressionist

Édouard 13 Beethoven’s “Für_” 18 Post-op areas, abbr. 23 “My turn!” 25 The S in RSVP 27 Brazilian hot spot, for short 28 Square footage 29 French short story writer Guy 30 Fathered, as a colt 31 Port of Yemen 32 Carpet cleaner, briefly 33 _ for (choose) 34 Opposed to, in dialect 36 Reason to sue 37 Latish lunchtime 39 “How may _ _ of

service?” 42 Snaky shape 44 Grafton’s “_ _ for

Evidence” 46 Org. once headed by Bush 41 47 “What?” in Nantes 48 Tips over 49 After, in Avignon 50 Tech’s clients 51 Thing, in Toulouse 54 But, in Bretagne 55 _-European (language

group) 57 To you, in Toulon 58 School on the Thames 59 Hand over, as property 61 Windows forerunner 63 President pro _ 64 Bard’s “before”

BYU COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES

John R. Rosenberg Dean

Gregory D. Clark Associate Dean

Ray T. Clifford Associate Dean

Frank Q. Christianson Associate Dean

Melinda Semadeni Assistant Dean

David L. Waddell Assistant Dean

Jared D. Christensen College Controller

Matthew B. Christensen LDS Philanthropies at BYU

ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT CHAIRS

J. Scott Miller Asian and Near Eastern Languages

Phillip A. Snyder English

Corry L. Cropper French and Italian

Michelle S. James Germanic and Russian

George B. Handley Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature

Diane Strong-Krause Linguistics and English Language

Travis T. Anderson Philosophy

David P. Laraway Spanish and Portuguese

DIRECTORS AND COORDINATORS OF ACADEMIC CENTERS AND PROGRAMS

Kristin L. Matthews American Studies

Ray T. Clifford Center for Language Studies

Matthew B. Christensen Chinese Flagship Center

Norman W. Evans English Language Center

Nicholas A. Mason European Studies

Matthew F. Wickman Humanities Center

Christopher C. Lund Latin American Studies

James A. Toronto Middle Eastern Studies–Arabic

R. Kirk Belnap National Middle East Language Resource Center

Jarom L. McDonald Office of Digital Humanities

Jesse S. Crisler Study of Christian Values in Literature

Valerie Hegstrom Women’s Studies

Brigham Young UniversityCollege of Humanities4002 JFSB, Provo, Utah 84602

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDPROVO, UT

PERMIT NO. 49

“Their driving motivation was neither money nor fame, but the will to achieve the most eloquent expression of idea-emotions through the technical mastery of their instruments . . . and the give and take, the subtle rhythmical shaping and blending of idea, tone and imagination demanded of group improvisation. The delicate balance struck between strong individual personality and the group during those early jam sessions was a marvel of social organization.”

Ralph Ellison, “Living with Music,” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 229.

Jazz musician Jonathan Batiste and his band Stay Human perform for and among a crowd, sharing their music and building a community. Jazz music can teach us a lot about community building and democ-racy, says humanities associate dean Greg Clark. “Good jazz,” he says, “is made as unique performers find in their very differences musical ways to get along.” (See p. 18.)

Photograph by Richard Conde

Documents

Fall 2014