James Baker Hall was a renowned Kentucky writer, UK faculty member, intense Wildcat fan and ultimately an interesting person. In his honor, the Student Activities Board and the College of Arts and Sciences have partnered to host the James Baker Hall Writers Series. This series is dedicated to writers who have been raised or influenced by living in Kentucky and designed as a memorial to James Baker Hall. The second installment of this series is from 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, in the Student Center's Worsham Theater. This event is free and sponsored by SAB.

This week, the series features authors Kelly Norman Ellis, Ellen Hagan and Nikky Finney. Expanding from the slam poetry movement, the writers will be reading their work and sharing

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky English professor Frank X Walker is not one to sit still. And the new director of both the African American Studies & Research and the Africana Studies Programs doesn't expect his students to either.

"I'd really like to make this a strong travel study program," Walker said of the newly combined African American & Africana studies minor in the College of Arts & Sciences. "And not just

University of Kentucky spinoff CoPlex Therapeutics announces global license with Hawthorn Pharmaceuticals to develop a treatment for Alzheimer’s

Story by Carl Nathe and Deb Weis

photos courtesy of UKCED

front page image left to right: Bert Lynn, Mark Lovell, John Beran

CoPlex Therapeutics has signed an exclusive global license agreement with Hawthorn Pharmaceuticals to develop and commercialize hawAD14, a preclinical oral small molecule candidate for the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

According to a released statement from Hawthorn Pharmaceuticals, a commercial-stage specialty drug company, research indicates hawAD14 significantly decreases production of amyloid beta (Aβ) the major component of senile plaques and alters proteins associated with hyperphosphorylation

The lecture, "Sexualizing Black Female Bodies, Constructing Culture and Nation in the French Caribbean," is part of the African American and Africana Studies Program's Carter G. Woodson Lecture Series and will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, in Room 249 of the Student Center. Admission is free and open to UK students, staff, faculty and the public.

Jacqueline Couti, an assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Modern and

On March 30 and 31, 2012, Tim Sundell and Stefan Bird-Pollan will convene an aesthetics conference at UK with four invited speakers, graduate student commentators, and a round table. The conference brings to a conclusion a year of aesthetics courses given by the two philosophy professors.

>>Listen to a podcast with Sundell and Bird-Pollan discuss the conference

The idea arose at a meeting of the undergraduate philosophy club in which, when asked about his area of research, Sundell’s discussion of the problem of aesthetic disagreement generated prolonged and enthusiastic questioning from the audience. Bird-Pollan, who also has an interest in aesthetics, recognized in Sundell’s presentation a version of Kant’s antinomy of taste

By Krystal Delfino

photos by Dana Rogers

When asked what his goals in life were growing up, Major Kris Morlen  says that he had always knew he wanted to serve in the military in some way, even when he was a young child. But, what would inspire such a strong desire in a little boy?

“I guess it was just the patriotic movies…A steady diet of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and G.I. Joes. It just appealed to me.”

The good versus evil dynamic was something that spoke to Morlen’s noble senses, and so he joined the military in 1986. However, he did not realize from the beginning that this would become a lifelong passion for him.

“I figured it would just be another chapter of my life, and then I’d go on to do other things. Get my college education…”

In 1988, Morlen began attending college at Indiana University Southeast. Very

Dean's Channel: Geography Professor Rich Schein discusses Community 101 from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.

Community 101: Geography Professor Rich Schein discusses a new A&S course that connects students to Lexington through history, culture, modern issues, and most importantly, why all of this should matter to UK students.

By Rebekah Tilley

“Last summer I was in Budapest briefly locked in a gypsy’s apartment while she tried to extort more money from me, and had a great time…” said Joe Nickell, as if he were describing a weekend at the lake. He is a man with many interests – over 200 “personas” are listed on his personal website including folksinger, stage magician, and séance conductor. His current title is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and investigative columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. However, he identifies himself simply as a writer.



“Writer seemed the one thing that complimented my insatiable curiosity,” said the author, co-author or editor of over 30 books. “The reason through so many interests and activities that I’ve held it all together – I

by Colleen Glenn

Patience is a virtue. Just ask Ginny Carney. An alum of the English Department, Carney is now President of Leech Lake Tribal College in Minnesota. But she didn’t get there overnight.

Carney, who is Cherokee Indian, was raised in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. The oldest of five children, Carney grew up without electricity (no phone or TV), indoor plumbing, or transportation. “As achildgrowing up in an isolated mountain region of East Tennessee, I assumed that everyone shared our worldview,” she recalls.

But all of the time she spent not watching television led Carney to become a voracious reader, and the more she read, the more she soon learned about cultures other than her own.

Disturbed by the disparaging views many authors held of Appalachian people as well as the stereotypical beliefs regarding American Indians, she vowed

story by Jay Blanton

video by Kody Kiser



To many people, Matt Cutts, Arts and Sciences and Engineering, '95, is simply known as No. 71.

But in the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, that means he is much more than just a number.

As one of Google's first 100 employees ever, Cutts was on the ground floor of what is today the world's largest search engine. It's a company that operates each day under the premise that helping people access the information they need when they need it can literally change the world for the better.

And Cutts, a native of Morehead, Ky., gives much of the credit for his success at Google to the undergraduate education he received at the University of Kentucky.

"There's no reason you can't get as good of an education at UK as anywhere else in the world," said Cutts, a 1995

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

Because the Russian Empire had 18 million men-in-arms, 5 million prisoners-of war and 2 million deaths during World War I, University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences history Professor and department Chair Karen Petrone just couldn't believe that no one remembered World War I in Russia.

"I spoke to colleagues in Russian history who told me that World War I memory was not a category in the Soviet Union, and that there was nothing about it in governmental archives," Petrone said. "Scholars believed that World War I memory did not exist."

While Petrone didn't necessarily set out to prove her fellow researchers wrong in 2002, she was inspired by the work of

By Whitney Hale

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, University of Kentucky's School of Music and the Latin American Studies Program present "Latin America in Music: A concert of Latin American Music." This concert featuring UK faculty and students, as well as international guest artists, will take the stage at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the Worsham Theater, in the UK Student Center. The concert is free and open to the public.

"Latin America in Music" will feature performances by:

If you are one of the many students still weighing graduate school or higher education options, you aren’t alone. Hispanic Studies graduate student Jeffrey Zamostny chose to complete a Graduate Certificate in Social Theory at UK because Social Theory encompasses more than one academic field and offers a broad spectrum of studies that he could tailor with a specialized dissertation.

“I was drawn to Social Theory because when you are in a Ph.D. program at UK, you are often with the same people, since you’re in a rather narrow field. Social Theory gives you the opportunity to meet many people in a wide range of departments. They approach the same topics, but from a variety of perspectives,” said Zamostny.

Zamostny discovered the Committee on Social Theory after taking a course in Gender and Women’s Studies. He liked many aspects of the class, but he wanted to combine

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky students and alumni from throughout campus and the community received career counseling from the inside out this past summer in a new eight-week online course offered by the College of Arts & Sciences.

A&S 350, or "Personal Strengths and Your Career Development," is a three-credit-hour self-development course, according to A&S Director of Advising and Student Services Greg Bocchino, a social science theorist with a heart for helping students who designed the class.

"This is an academic course based on chaos theory that focuses on a non-linear career decision-making strategy." Bocchino said. "Yet we're also developmental, moving students from point A to point

Biology professor David Westneat from the University of Kentucky's College of Arts & Sciences has won a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), guaranteeing 10 weeks of research to 10 undergraduate students at UK's Ecological Research Facility (ERF) or Griffith Woods beginning next summer.

UK biologists, along with researchers from the College of Agriculture and the College of Education will host an annual 10-week summer program for undergraduate research on suburban ecology and invasive species.

In summer 2011, Arts & Sciences Video Production team member Natalie Baxter traveled to Whitesburg, Ky to help teach Appalshop interns how to create documentary style short films about the Appalachian region. The program, Appalachian Media Institute (AMI), has interns ages 14 to 21 that live in the surrounding Appalachian Kentucky counties.



Filmed by: Dana Rogers, Brian Connors Manke, and Noah Adler



Edited by: Dana Rogers

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The emotional suffering and clinical treatment associated with infertility is wide-ranging and ever-changing.

In the Middle Eastern world, many of the couples unable to have children suffer a social stigma as well, according to Marcia Inhorn, William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University.

Inhorn, a specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, will present the second lecture of the UK Department of Anthropology's Annual Colloquium Series titled 

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky continues on its international course with a visit from University of Haifa Rector (Provost) David Faraggi this week.  While here, Faraggi signed a memorandum of understanding, or a general cooperation agreement, with President Eli Capilouto Monday, Sept. 12.

“The University of Kentucky is excited about the opportunity to partner with the University of Haifa,” said Capilouto. “With the phenomenal advances in technology and industry, strategic collaborations between postsecondary institutions play an important role in a growing global economy.”

This past June, a UK delegation including public health professors Douglas Scutchfield and Jim Holsinger and Associate Provost for International Programs Susan Carvalho traveled to

Dean Mark Kornbluh continues his Dean's Channel series, sitting down with professor Gang Cao from the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Director of UK's Center for Advanced Materials.

They discuss the great benefit of UK housing its own helium liquefier as well as a number of other advances with materials research.

Dean Mark Kornbluh continues his Dean's Channel series, sitting down with professor Gang Cao from the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Director of UK's Center for Advanced Materials. 

They discuss the great benefit of UK housing its own helium liquefier as well as a number of other advances with materials research.