Cougar Query: "My favorite lecture to teach is about the history of the color pink and its gendered associations"

Name: Amy Harris

BYU employee since: 2006

My job at BYU involves... teaching students how to find family members they’ve never known and hopefully how to live better in the families they do know.

Currently I’m working on... projects on poverty and kinship, marriage, sibling relationships and on the history of genealogy. I’m also working to reduce my lawn-to-dandelion ratio, making plans for my annual backpacking trip with my brother and struggling to convince the Mia Maids to make comments during class.

I get most excited about my work — always. Well, unless it involves grading; my thoughts about grading cannot be spoken or printed in polite company.

Filling out pedigree charts when I was six years old and asking my parents for family stories... sparked my interest in my field.

Living in a small LDS branch inside Washington, DC, changed the way I view my membership in the Church because it taught me the importance of community and relationships to faith and salvation.

What makes teaching the greatest job in the world is... seeing students capture a vision of, and take charge of, their own learning and their own choices.

My favorite lecture to teach is... about the history of the color pink and its gendered associations. (Spoiler alert: pink has been a “girl” color only since the late 1960s.)

My most cherished memory at BYU... comes from my undergraduate days and encompasses one of the deepest, most defining spiritual experiences of my life.

Three things that are always found in my refrigerator are... fresh fruit, a forgotten, mildly desiccated cucumber and a comforting variety of cheeses.

You’ll never find me without... my sanity. Or sunglasses.

The title of my autobiography would be... Little Sister Sees the World One Archive at a Time And Writes Beautiful Footnotes About Her Adventures.