Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Reflections In Detroit: The Personal Essay As Epistemological Method, Greg Wurm, Joey Franklin

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of my project was to explore and demonstrate how the personal essay could be used as more than just a literary form of the humanities, but as an epistemological method in the social sciences. I built off the work of Dr. Andrew Abbott, of the University of Chicago, who, in 2007, proposed what he called “lyrical sociology.” In his piece, “Against Narrative: A Preface to Lyrical Sociology,” he described that a lyrical sociology sought to “communicate its author’s emotional stance toward his or her object of study, rather than to ‘explain’ that object.” The personal essay has also …

Constructively Broken, Sarah D'Evegnee

BYU Studies Quarterly

“Crazy world. Cockeyed.”

Mr. Savo, in The Chosen, by Chiam Potok

Jewels, Michelle Forstrom

BYU Studies Quarterly

The first time it happened, I was seven. My grandma had mailed me a tiny ring for my birthday, an aquamarine set in silver. I clapped my hands and couldn’t stop jumping when I saw it. It was the first piece of jewelry I had ever owned; like wearing a piece of the sky. I took it everywhere—presenting my hand to the world, palm down, as if I were queen. It was the most beautiful ring in the history of rings.

Aviophobia, Kim Webb Reid

BYU Studies Quarterly

The January day SkyWest Flight 1834 smashed into a private two-seater plane midair over my elementary school, I was at recess. Some of us snatched at clothes drifting down from the sky because we thought they should be handed over to the school’s lost and found. We didn’t know yet of all the lost things that could never be returned: a jagged wing blocking my friend’s front door; a pilot’s black leather seat perched on my neighbor’s roof; the lives of ten passengers, captains, and crew. Grown-ups spoke in whispers about the carnage found in backyards and closed roads and …

No Words, Elizabeth Dodds

BYU Studies Quarterly

After all these years, I’m still afraid of getting a brain aneurysm. Just a few weeks ago in church, my head started hurting, and I reached up and felt a vein throbbing on the side of my skull. I leaned over to my uncle sitting beside me and whispered, “What if it’s a brain aneurysm?” He laughed and said it wasn’t. “But how can you be sure?” I thought. Because I looked up brain aneurysms a long time ago and found out that they have no symptoms. No warnings before they hit you like an air bag. Wham. Suddenly, there’s …