When we hear of homelessness, we think of people who have no jobs and sleep on the street, in tents, under bridges, on trains, in the subway, or near street grates to keep warm. They are the homeless people we see. But there are others we do not see as we drive by because they […]
Read MoreAnnual Report for 2025–2026 Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center Download PDF
Read MoreCamp and criticism at the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City symposium The Salt Lake Tribune Here are 7 ways scholars say ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ is more than just a reality show Read more Daily Utah Chronicle U Tanner Humanities Center hosts ‘Real Housewives’ symposium Read more KUER These academics gave […]
Read MoreThe origins of human freedom, as we imagine them, are strange. In the Western tradition, freedom was won by warriors breaking free from the constraints of political rule and domestic conformity. Against the authority of the state and the bonds of kinship and household, the warrior establishes liberty through transgression and conquest. Warriors, like a […]
Read MoreA hiring app that draws on workers’ credit reports to offer lower pay to those desperate to get out of debt. A search engine that blurs the line between answers and advertisements. A social media platform that buys its competitors rather than competing with them. These are not isolated failures; they are the outcomes of […]
Read MoreNarrative is often thought of as a string or sequence of events in time: a linear progression from beginning to end. What this purely temporal conception overlooks, however, is the imaginary space opened up and generated by a story’s narration. Through techniques like detailed description, and a focus on world rather than sequence, narrative may […]
Read More“Is this the game you really want to be playing?” This question is at the core of Thi Nguyen’s new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, published this year by Penguin. At the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on February 5, 2026, Nguyen discussed his book with Shelby Moser (Games Division […]
Read MoreTo a packed auditorium at the Salt Lake City Public Library on January 21, 2026, Father Gregory Boyle shared what he has learned from building Homeboy Industries—and, more broadly, how to practice a kinship that can withstand shame, trauma, and the reflex to throw people away. Boyle, a Jesuit priest, is the founder of Homeboy […]
Read MoreIn her 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts on October 23, Jesmyn Ward shared with the audience at the Salt Lake City Public Library a new piece to appear in an upcoming collected edition of her writing. A personal memoir essay, Ward’s lecture recounted her writing of her recent […]
Read MoreAt a Tanner Humanities Center and Marriott Library event on October 20, journalist Alex Beam introduced his new biography, Wallace Stegner: Dean of Western Writers (Signature Books). Drawing on the Stegner archive housed in the Marriott Library’s Special Collections, Beam traced the novelist’s complicated life and enduring impact on American letters and environmental thought. The […]
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