By Kody Kiser and Jenny Wells-Hosley
Podcasts
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 15, 2021) — “We cannot understand where humanity has been and where we are going without Black Studies.”
This is the mantra of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS) — a multidisciplinary research institute based in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of African American and Africana Studies.
The institute…
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By Kody Kiser and Jenny Wells-Hosley
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 14, 2022) — In the fall of 2020, the University of Kentucky announced plans to establish the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS) — a multidisciplinary program designed to highlight UK’s growing research around issues of race and racism.
The interdisciplinary institute establishes research clusters across the campus and promotes the university’s…
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By Kody Kiser
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 10, 2020) — The discussions over removal of Confederate memorials in the United States have been some of the more prominent ones in our current cultural landscape. Gaining momentum from other recent social movements that are happening concurrently, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo and beyond, the focus of these discussions now seems to have widened to include memorials and statues that go well further back than the American Civil War, and beyond the borders of this…
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LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 3, 2020) — This summer, the United States has seen nationwide demonstrations and protests in light of, among other things, the killing of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis May 25. Local protests, including ones in response to the death of former University of Kentucky student Breonna Taylor during a "no-knock" warrant raid in Louisville on March 13, quickly spread across the country, and The New York Times cited polls that estimated, as of July 3, between 15 and 26 million people had participated at some…
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By Jay Blanton and Kody Kiser
LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 22, 2020) — Tracy Campbell is the E. Vernon Smith and Eloise C. Smith Professor of American History at the University of Kentucky. He has written well-received accounts of voter fraud in the country, a biography of the Gateway Arch and a compelling biography of Ed Prichard, a legendary name in Kentucky politics whose life was a story of tragedy and redemption.
Recently, Campbell’s…
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From Florida to California, from Alabama to Maine, monuments to the Confederacy have been under increased scrutiny and the subject of efforts to either preserve them or remove them from the grounds they occupy.
In an effort to get more perspective on the swirling controversy around the future of these statues, this week’s episode of "Behind the Blue" features Amy Murrell Taylor, from the Department of History in the UK College of Arts and Sciences. A 2016 winner of the UK Alumni Association’s Great…
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By Vice President for Research Lisa Cassis
Abigail Firey didn’t set out to blaze trails in digital humanities. But that’s exactly what has happened in her quest to get a grasp on the enormous corpus of unpublished manuscripts that are part of her work in medieval canon law.
In this podcast Firey, the Theodore A. Hallam Professor (2017-2019) in the Department of History and a University Research Professor, recalls the chance encounter that changed her trajectory.
“In 2007 a researcher at UK in the Classics Department, Ross Scaife—deeply beloved—ran into me outside the library. And I was…
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After years of artistic license, is Hollywood finally getting history right?
Join prof. Amy Murrell Taylor and graduate student Wes Farmer as they discuss the Civil War, Hollywood, and History with Rachel Herrington.
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"UK at the Half" interview with UK history Professor Gerald Smith about the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia.
Now celebrated in several nations around the world, Black History Month began humbly when noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other African American leaders urged the nation to recognize a “Negro History Week” in February 1926. Fifty years later, President Gerald Ford officially designated February as Black History Month, defining it as an annual celebration of the achievements of African Americans and their roles in U.S. history. At the time, he urged the…
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