Writing

Making America Feel Like Home: Family, Conflict, and Belonging on Television

Reads Leave It to Beaver, All in the Family, Friends, and Modern Family as representations of national belonging, domestic authority, care, and exclusion.

Who Gets a Seat at America’s Family Table?

Companion op-ed to the television paper: what family sitcoms teach about belonging, national identity, and who gets left out of the picture.

Ordinary Movement, Quiet Awareness: Spiritual Life in Rockwell’s Lift Up Thine Eyes

A close reading of Norman Rockwell’s Fifth Avenue sidewalk, where faith has not disappeared from modern life but moved into quieter, less visible forms.

Walking Two Paths: Code-Switching and Formation in Charles Eastman’s Education

From the Deep Woods to Civilization read through Indigenous identity, rhetorical restraint, and the navigation of white institutions.

Roake v. Brumley: Judicial Delay Undermines Religious Freedom

On mandatory Ten Commandments displays in Louisiana public-school classrooms, constitutional liberty, and the cost of postponing judicial review.

What’s Hanging on the Classroom Wall?

Companion op-ed to the Roake v. Brumley paper: can a state require the Ten Commandments on the wall of every public-school classroom?

Seeing Religious Freedom in the Scriptures

Samuel the Lamanite and Ammon as scriptural models of religious liberty.

American Studies Teaches You to Read America Before You Try to Lead in It

Why a major that matches reality: a Career Fair booth, the question “What is American Studies, exactly?”, and what the field prepares you to do.

Sport as Cold War Diplomacy: Recognition and Rivalry between East and West Germany

International sport as a stage for political recognition, rivalry, and diplomatic symbolism in divided Germany.

A Voice for Women, a Defense of Family: Barbara B. Smith and a Decade of Change

Ongoing historical research on Smith’s Relief Society leadership, women’s opportunities, and family responsibility during the ERA era.

Biography, Memory, and the Stories We Keep

Matthew Mason and Richard Bell on narrative choices, public memory, and the people that national memory cleans up.

Making a Record: The BYU Women @150 Project

On collaborative biography, archives, and the recovery of women’s institutional contributions, from a Global Women’s Studies colloquium panel.

Going Global: The History of Women’s Studies at BYU

A response to Dr. Renata Forste on women’s education and the growth of an academic field.

Special Collections Mixtape: Gail S. Halvorsen at Tempelhof

A 1948 Berlin Airlift photograph read for empathy, public trust, and civic memory, from the research behind the Candy Bomber library installation.

Words as Catalysts: The Indelible Legacy of Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s anti-apartheid fiction, activism, and friendships with the liberation movement, and whether a writer’s life can leave the world more understanding of unfairness.

Reading Response: Biography and the Historian’s Profession

On Nasaw’s “unloved stepchild” and why academic historians have taken biography less seriously than other kinds of history.

British Museum, Room 49: Roman Britain

A structured study of how Room 49 collects, arranges, and presents Roman Britain, from Hadrian’s Wall to the Rudge Cup.

Holding Grief in Place: Adapting a Scene from Lincoln in the Bardo

A seven-part reflection on adapting the crypt scene for voice and image: narration, witness, pacing, and silence.

Seeing the Field: Adaptation, Perception, and the Authentic Self

The Legend of Bagger Vance, and how a film visually rebuilds a novel’s ideas about perception and identity.

Happiness—Free of Charge

A literary and creative essay developed within anthology coursework.

The Roles Beneath the Roles

Gender socialization, caregiving, authority, appearance, and emotional labor, and the difference between chosen commitments and imposed expectations.

Staying at the Tree: Learning Truth From the Fruit

Revelatory dreams and the value of staying close to the Savior: Lehi’s dream read as a pattern for covenant discipleship after the fruit.

1 Nephi 8 and 11: Staying at the Tree

A verse-by-verse commentary on Lehi’s dream: darkness can begin revelation, and the fruit teaches what the tree is.

Lehi’s Dream: A Map of Covenant Discipleship

President McKay’s teaching that true religion refines character, read alongside Lehi’s vision as a living map for disciples under pressure.

The Faithful Middle: How God Measures a Life

Alma’s fifteen verses to Shiblon read as evidence of attention rather than absence: brevity, trust, and the less visible disciple.

Under formal review for final submission as a BYU publication

Alma’s Counsel to Shiblon: The Faithful Middle and Continuing in Christ

A commentary on Alma 38 and the son who received neither the records nor the correction, only trust.

King Benjamin: From Fear to Joy

Covenant renewal, humility, mercy, and the false measures of righteousness in King Benjamin’s final sermon.

Anchored by Ancient Patterns: Chiasmus and Other Evidence of the Book of Mormon

Chiasmus and other ancient literary structures as evidence of the Book of Mormon’s authenticity, alongside Joseph Smith’s background and witnesses.

The Infinite Atonement: From Temporal Mindset to Eternal Vision

What changes when the Atonement is read as eternal rather than as a formula for earthly blessings, drawing on mission experience.

Embracing Life’s Choices: Finding Joy and Eternal Happiness

Eve’s choice in the plan of salvation, read through talks by Elder Russell M. Nelson and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland.

Teaching Journal

Weekly reflections on teaching success, Christlike teaching, and preparing lessons for seminary students.

Accessing Divine Grace and Love

Joy as a doctrine of the Book of Mormon: how divine grace and love are accessed through faith, trial, and the Atonement.

The World Cup: A Stage, a Mirror, and a Test of What We Value

A response to the Kennedy Center panel “Fútbol Is Life,” and the World Cup as a lens on identity, money, and global attention.

Burnley Football Club and the Life of a Town

A response to Stuart Hunt’s presentation on how a football club carries the life of an English town.

Dr. Michaela Dufur: The Great Bridge and the Cost of Warping It

Sports as a system that distributes power, status, and opportunity, and what it meant to feel personally called out by it.

BYU Student-Athlete Panel

Swimmers, volleyball players, and cheerleaders on discipline, formation, and public character beyond the scoreboard.

Victoria Jackson on College Sports, Football, and the Olympic Pipeline

A response to the Kennedy Center lecture on college athletics and the pathway to the Olympics.

Hosting the World’s Games, Inheriting the World’s Problems

A response to Heather L. Dichter, whose work on sport, statecraft, and diplomacy shaped Carol’s class essay.

Jesse O’Bky and a Broader Definition of Athleticism

A lecture that expanded the meaning of athleticism by asking the body to move other people emotionally.

Lola Ogunbote: More Than the Scoreline

Sport as a platform for impact, calling over prestige, and identity before God.

International Cinema: Tiny Lights and the Silence Children Live Inside

Beata Parkanová’s Tiny Lights follows a six-year-old through one summer day of adult silences.

Dr. Nancy Major and the Value of the Detour

Careers that change course, service, and how success gets defined, in response to Dr. Nancy Major’s “Do It Your Way” lecture.

Opinion: The Value of the Detour

An earlier, shorter response to the same lecture on careers that do not run in straight lines.

Hear Him

On prayer, gratitude, and the pull between school, family, and the people she loves.

Professional Plan

A five-year path from undergraduate study and a summer internship to graduate work in American Studies, writing, and teaching.

Becoming Peacemakers

Why peace reaches deeper than composure: motive, discipline, and peacemaking as a demanding form of discipleship.

Peacemaking Reflection

Peacemaking as letting the Lord work on one’s own heart first, and as honest, active repair.

Peacemaking Goals for American Studies

Early goals for the semester: collaboration, disagreement, and constructive dialogue.