Skip to main content

News

By Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 29, 2021) — The 40th annual Kentucky Book Festival returns to Lexington with a mix of virtual and in-person events scheduled from Monday, Nov. 1, to Saturday, Nov. 6. This year’s celebration features 140 authors, culminating in a daylong celebration at Joseph-Beth Booksellers on Saturday, Nov. 6. The weekdays events are a mix of in-person and ticketed events available at http://kybookfestival.org/2021-events

These signings, conversations, trivia, meals, presentations and activities serve to celebrate the literary heritage within the Commonwealth. The University of Kentucky is the Main Stage sponsor of the festival on Nov. 6.

Authors and editors from the 

By Phil Harling

Please join us in extending a warm Kentucky welcome to Devyn Spence Benson and Hilary Jones! Hilary and Devyn are wonderfully accomplished researchers and instructors who joined our faculty this fall as associate professors with tenure, and joint appointments in the Program in African American and Africana Studies. We are so thrilled to be able to call them our friends and colleagues!

Devyn Spence Benson is a 20th century historian who focuses on antiracist movements across the Americas and the Caribbean. Her research and teaching interests sit at the intersection of Africana Studies and Latin American history, and she has worked throughout her career to merge these two interdisciplinary fields by focusing on Afro-Cuban history, politics, and culture. Before her arrival at UK, Devyn has taught at Williams College, Louisiana State University, and

By Julie Wrinn

As a high school student in Lexington, John Bell had two thoughts about college: he wanted to go out of state, and he wanted to study architecture. For a variety of reasons, neither wish came true.

“Having grown up in Lexington, I wasn’t enamored with the idea of being at home to go to college, but it was what I could do,” Bell said. “Then once I started at UK, I began to realize that college is what you make of it.”

As a shining example of making a virtue of necessity, Bell enrolled as a history major at UK and nurtured a passion for German language and culture that led to a 26-year career in the CIA.

“I remember watching war movies as a kid, thinking, ‘I really want to understand what the Germans are saying,’” he said.

Gerhard Mayrwieser, a German teacher at Bell’s high school, was a native of Munich and sparked Bell’s curiosity

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky – Academy Award-winner Kevin Willmott, the director of “The 24th,” will speak at an event featuring the film at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 13. The event will be offered both in person at the Chad Perry III Grand Court Room in the J. David Rosenberg School of Law on the University of Kentucky campus and online. People may register for the online event here.  

The Visiting Writers Series, part of UK’s Department of English in the College of Arts & Sciences, is

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. – If you’ve never heard of the bands the SunmatesFrigidkittyWhalerusCindy or Please Save My Earth, don’t worry – Rae Bandy has you covered. From inside the studios in WRFL in the University of Kentucky’s Gatton Student Center,

By Jesi Jones-Bowman

UK undergraduate researchers Bridget Bolt and Gretchen Ruschman. Students are encouraged to explore undergraduate research opportunities at the Research + Creative Experience Expo.

At the University of Kentucky, undergraduates have access to outstanding research and creative work activities led by world-class faculty and staff that promote self-discovery, experiential learning and lifelong achievement.

Explore exciting undergraduate opportunities at the first annual UK Research + Creative Experience Expo 3-5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13, around the Gatton Student Center’s Social Staircase.

“The goal of the Research + Creative Experience Expo is to introduce undergraduates to the diversity of research and creative work conducted at UK,” said Chad Risko, faculty director of the

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 6, 2021) — Before you know it, summer will be coming to a close. But there’s still time to get lost in a good book.

We asked the University of Kentucky community to recommend books they feel would make good additions to anyone’s summer reading list.

In the descriptions below, faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences share the books they can’t put down. Pulling from the worlds of history and fiction — their picks explore timely themes while providing intriguing insights.

“A Time of Gifts” by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Recommended by Phil Harling, chair of the Department of History in

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 27, 2021) — The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center has honored eight students with its annual research awards. Three graduate students received the James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, and four graduate students and one undergraduate student received the center's Eller and Billings Student Research Award.

“The Appalachian Center is again excited to support a wide range of student research,” said Kathryn Engle, director of the Appalachian Center. “From history to social science to health to the natural sciences, our students are doing groundbreaking work in the region.”

The James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia is given to honor the

By University Press of KentuckyUK Libraries and Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 9, 2021) —  Thanks to University Press of Kentucky and librarians from the UK Libraries, here's a short list to of summer reading tips from University of Kentucky faculty members, alumni and local community members.

With topics ranging from food and beverages, history and geography to fiction and sports — there’s something for every reader and every interest. 

Athletics and Sports

CHSS is happy to announce its first-ever round of grant awards. Four awardees are recipients of the Faculty Manuscript Book Workshop! The Faculty Manuscript Book Workshops are an opportunity for generating constructive, informed criticism on near-final book manuscripts, when authors can most effectively utilize such feedback. An expert in the awardee’s field will be invited to present their thoughts on the manuscript, followed by a response from the author and discussion with a broader group of invited faculty.    And the winners are:     Eladio Bobadilla https://history.as.uky.edu/users/ebo268 Eladio Bobadilla is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of History. His tenure book is “Without Borders: A History of the Immigrants’ Rights Movement.” The manuscript is a part of the Working Class in American History Series and is

By Phil Harling

Vanessa Holden is Associate Professor of History and African American & Africana Studies.

This has been an exciting academic year for our friend and colleague Vanessa Holden. She’s returned to Lexington after a fruitful time as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Center for Diversity Innovation at the University at Buffalo. She’s just been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with Tenure. And she has an important book coming out in July with the University of Illinois Press, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community. Her pathbreaking monograph promises to be a foundational text in our effort to understand practices of survival and resistance within communities of enslaved people, including the crucial but all too often overlooked roles that women and indeed even children played in them.

By Julie Wrinn

Madeline Imler is a double major in history and anthropology who plans to pursue graduate work in history.

While online education has existed for some time, not until Covid-19 did anyone realize that online internships made sense. The whole point of an internship is to exit the classroom and experience real-world environments, working side-by-side with people in your field of interest. But with so many of those real-world environments also operating remotely during Covid, suddenly the idea of a remote internship didn’t seem so peculiar.

Madeline Imler (B.A. in History and Anthropology, May 2022) can now attest to the value of such an internship. A graduate of Assumption High School in Louisville, Madeline served as an intern in fall 2020 for the UK Cooperative for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS). Inaugurated in 2020 and led by former History

By Lindsey Piercy May 24, 2021

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 24, 2021) — It's a question that is critical to families and communities across the Commonwealth — how do we tackle the opioid epidemic?

The University of Kentucky is helping to organize and host the second annual Edward Kremers Seminar in the History of Pharmacy & Drugs in hopes of continuing the conversation surrounding addiction and recovery.

The 2021 “Kreminar” will feature virtual seminars about the history and contemporary status of opiates, opioids and addiction.

“The Cooperative for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) is pleased to co-sponsor these events because it is important to understand that drug use and

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Carrigan Wasilchenko was adopted from China through Holt International and grew up as an Asian American in Powell County, Kentucky. Thanks to the opportunity to pursue a liberal arts education at the University of Kentucky – and to take part in a new class that looks at the history of Asian Americans – she was able to see how her story fit into the mosaic that is the United States.  

“Growing up, I always tried to fade into the whiteness of my community, and I was just kind of afraid because I didn't know, first of all, what it meant to be Asian,” said Wasilchenko, who recently graduated from the College of Health Sciences and will enter UK Medical School in the fall. “In your teen years, everyone has an identity crisis: ‘Who am I? What do I stand

By Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 26, 2021) — Two University of Kentucky faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences are recipients of The Graduate School’s distinguished annual awards for exemplary research in the last four years and outstanding contributions to graduate student mentoring and graduate education.

Mark T. Fillmore, Director of Graduate Studies and professor of cognitive science in the Department of Psychology, is the 2021 recipient of the William B. Sturgill Award, an honor given each year to a graduate faculty member who has provided outstanding contributions to graduate education at UK.

In addition, 

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Disparities in Appalachian property tax assessments – and the inability of counties to raise them because of a Kentucky law – has drawn the ire of Michelle Starkey, who delved into the subject with all the passion an undergraduate history major could muster.

The resulting essay, “Bleeding Eastern Kentucky,” received the first Ireland Paper Prize in History at the University of Kentucky. The award, from the Department of History in the College of Arts & Sciences, carries a $10,000 prize.

The prize honors Robert M. Ireland, a retired UK history faculty member who taught at UK for 41 years. Wm. Joseph Foran, a UK alumnus who was a student of Ireland’s, established the award to encourage and reward outstanding historical research and writing by history students.

Although Starkey, who graduated as a history major in

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 8, 2021) — Amy Murrell Taylor, the T. Marshall Hahn Jr. Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, is serving as the 2020-21 College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Professor and will deliver the annual Distinguished Professor Lecture next week.

"My colleagues across the College of Arts and Sciences have inspired me in so many ways,” Murrell Taylor said. “To have them recognize me with a distinguished professorship is deeply humbling — and an honor I will cherish for the rest of my career."

The lecture, titled 

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences will induct six new members into the A&S Hall of Fame next week as part of its 2020 class of inductees.

For the first time in 21 years, the Hall of Fame ceremony will take place virtually, offering the campus community and the public the opportunity to watch the induction ceremony and celebration. The ceremony had to be delayed last year due to COVID-19 restrictions. Those interested in attending must register at https://forms.as.uky.edu/hof-rsvp and can tune in at 7 p.m. EDT Friday, April 9, at www.as.uky.edu/hall-fame-live.

The 2020 alumni inductees include:

Ouita Papka Michel (Political

By University Press of Kentucky and Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 30, 2021) — The University Press of Kentucky is debuting its newest series, “Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices,” edited by Crystal Wilkinson, niversity of Kentucky faculty member and Kentucky's recently named Poet Laureate, alongside Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and Davis Shoulders.

This book series gives voice to Black, Native, Latinx, Asian, queer and other nonwhite or ignored identities within the Appalachian region.  

“This series reminds us that Appalachian literature is an ever-changing, complex organism with ancient bones and a