By Sarah Geegan

Rich Kirby and John Haywood will present the second lecture in the Appalachian Studies Program’s Place Matters lecture series on Friday, Feb. 17.

The lecture, “Somewheres on the Track: Place, Art and Music in Eastern Kentucky,” will demonstrate Kirby and Haywood's experience with all three – place, art, and music – from Appalachian Kentucky. Their multimedia presentation will take place  from 3:30-5 p.m. in the Center Theater, University of Kentucky Student Center.

Rich Kirby is a musician who founded June Appal Recordings in 1974. For over 30 years –

By Kathy Johnson

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, Appalachian Studies and the Graduate Appalachian Research Community are making a call for papers for the 2012 UK Appalachian Research Symposium and Arts Showcase. The topic of the work must be related to Appalachia, original, and produced in the last three years. 

The deadline for submitting an abstract of work online is midnight Dec. 15. The submission can be made by going to the GARC tab on www.

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences will host a trailblazing American diplomat next week to continue the college's Year of China initiative.

Former U.S. Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch will speak on “Leadership and Education in a Globalizing World: China’s Challenge” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in Room 118 of the White Hall Classroom Building on UK's campus.

Bloch’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the "Passport to China: Global Issues & Local Understanding" course taught by UK sociology Professor Keiko Tanaka.

Ambassador Bloch, the first Asian-American ambassador in American history, has had a broad career in U.S. government service. She is currently president of the U.S.-China Education Trust, a nonprofit

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky's Committee on Social Theory will welcome a former faculty member and active debater in spatial science and geographic thought to campus for its Fall Distinguished Speaker and Founders Forum this week.

John Paul Jones III, dean of the University of Arizona's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, will deliver the committee's annual lecture titled, "The Politics of Autonomous Spaces" at 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14, in the West End Boardroom on the 18th floor of Patterson Office Tower.

Jones' visit and participation in the annual series is unique, as he was an esteemed professor and colleague on the faculty of UK's Department of Geography from the fall of 1991 to summer

By Gail Hairston, Erin Holaday Ziegler

There's an academic side of Martin Luther King Jr. that few people know about. From John Locke to Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, King studied them all and considered going into academia himself.

University of Kentucky philosophy Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences and the inaugural UK Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center Scholar-in-Residence Arnold Farr would like to bring this integral aspect of King's life to the forefront of discussion at UK.

To that end, he has initiated a MLK Scholar-in-Residence Series

by Erin Holaday Ziegler

When the University of Kentucky established the Committee on Social Theory in 1989, it was one of the first of its kind.

The committee, in the College of Arts and Sciences, provides one of the most engaging teaching, research and learning experiences at UK, including 75 affiliated faculty from 17 departments and schools across campus. 

 "The program is premised on the belief that major social questions and problems, issues of our time and of earlier periods, that touch all of us, can be investigated constructively across disciplinary and theoretical divides, between scholars and intellectuals, particularly of the humanities and the social sciences, as well as, we believe, the physical and life sciences,” said Social Theory Director and French Professor

Ph.D. Student By Rebekah Tilley

Photos by Mark Cornelison



Culture expresses itself in a myriad of familiar ways – our music, fashion, entertainment, literature. Perhaps less noted is the way that culture impacts our bodies including the very manner we are brought into the world and the food that nourishes us during gout first year of life.



As a graduate student in geography, Rebecca Lane turned to social theory to provide a more in depth understanding of the theoretical structures within her own discipline that inform her research on medical and feminist geography while benefitting from the perspectives of other graduate students and instructors outside her own discipline.



“I needed this type of knowledge,” said Lane when asked how social theory impacted her research portfolio. “

Ph.D. Student

By Rebekah Tilley

Photos by Richie Wireman

Who’s afraid of a little theory? Unfortunately, many of us would rather clean our bathrooms than painfully work through the writings of Derrida and Foucault. Geography doctoral candidate and social theory student James Looney found that for many graduate students, the UK Social Theory Program takes the edge off gaining a solid theoretical foundation in their own academic disciplines.

“Theoretical training tends to be two things in many graduate programs – woefully lacking and threatening,” said Looney. “The Social Theory Program allows a place where one can access and learn about theory. It takes care of the unfamiliarity and the inaccessibility of theory.”

Looney is a cultural and social geographer who focuses his research on cultural landscapes, and much of his work is