By Divya Menon, Erin Holaday

For proof that reection, exclusion and acceptance are central to our lives, look no farther than the living room, says psychology professor Nathan DeWall in the University of Kentucky's College of Arts & Sciences.

“If you turn on the television set and watch any reality TV program, most of them are about rejection and acceptance,” he said. The reason, according to DeWall, is that acceptance—in romantic relationships, from friends, even from strangers—is absolutely fundamental to humans.

In a new paper published in 

University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences Dean Mark Kornbluh sits down with professors Cristina Alcalde and Jeff Rice to talk about A&S Wired Residential College. Along with Psychology professor Nathan DeWall, Alcalde and Rice serve as co-Directors of UK's newest Living Learning Community. For more information on A&S Wired, visit wired.as.uky.edu

Cheyenne Hohman is a graduate student in Library & Information Science at UK and is a podcasting coordinator for the College of A&S. We turned the tables on her to find out about her recent endeavors that included an internship at the Library of Congress and a Zine Writer's Residency in Halifax, Nova Scotia

https://www.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Books%20and%20Zines_%20Cheye…

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It was in the UK College of Arts & Science that Tracy Campbell learned to think like a historian, and to see the connective tissues of historical events.



“To me UK is a magical place,” Campbell said. “I was a changed person by the time I graduated. Those required classes that A&S made me take kicking and screaming opened up whole new worlds for me.”



Today, Campbell is infusing the next generation of UK students with the curiosity, technique and enthusiasm of a historian as a professor in the UK Department of History. His effectiveness in the classroom was recently recognized with a 2010 Great Teacher

The 2008 Russia–Georgia War was a blip on the screen for most Americans who may remember it only because the conflict was referenced during the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, which coincided with the five-day war. While most of  us still struggle to locate Georgia on a map, the war had profound effects on tens of thousands of people living in militarily contested areas.

 

“It was actually looking at a map during my senior year in college that got me interested in that region of the world,” said Erin Koch, assistant professor in the UK Department of Anthropology, who has been researching in Georgia since 2000.



Georgia is located in the South Caucasus, which is a neck of

Ph.D. Student By Saraya Brewer

Photos by Mark Cornelison



With an undergraduate career heavy in business and marketing, and several years experience working in an advertising firm, Cindy Isenhour might seem like an unlikely candidate to suddenly turn her academic focus toward anthropology.



“In my spare time, I was becoming more and more interested in issues of social and environmental justice,” Isenhour explained about her switch in focus. “I started to realize that there were a lot of contradictions in my own life - in terms of sustainability, working in an industry that drives consumerism.”

 

As it turns out, her relationship with marketing and advertising made her uniquely qualified for the direction her research would take: the culture of consumption, and how it pertains to

When Kyle Longley applied to doctoral programs in history, he narrowed the choice down to two schools: the University of Kentucky and one other. But a visit to Lexington and Billy’s Bar-B-Q, where he had lunch with George Herring, the professor who would become his mentor, made UK the place to go.

“Once I met George, there was no choice,” Longley said. “He was just a very accommodating and helpful professor.”

Twenty years later, Longley is the Snell Family Dean’s Distinguished professor of history at Arizona State. He’s written four books, edited and contributed to another and is about to send his fifth to the publishers. He’s won many teaching awards and has contributed to mainstream publications like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times andNewsweek

Moisés Castillo can convince you that everything you’ve ever read circles back to Cervantes. As a new professor in the Hispanic Studies Department, Castillo doesn’t need to do too much convincing to get students to relate to an author who has been published only nearly as often as the Bible. “I can teach, through Cervantes, how all of these issues connect directly, expressly, in a very transparent way in today’s politics, today’s way of treating religious issues, ideology," he began. “It is amazing, and students say, ‘I should’ve taken Cervantes to understand Borges,’ because Borges was reading Cervantes. To understand Balzac, and the French, or James Joyce, every single great novelist today: you have to understand Cervantes.”



For the last several years, the department of Hispanic Studies has been

In the time away from her anthropological research, Susan Stonich engages in a familiar and common hobby – “I’m a weaver.”

“The creative part of my life is weaving and textile design, I’m very interested in that,” she said.

But the nature of weaving, interlacing different threads to create a larger, coherent fabric, is integral to understanding Stonich’s career as an anthropological researcher and political ecologist. “I really do research that tends to integrate all those previously diverse fields.”

At the core of both Stonich’s research and pedagogical approach is a belief in the value and necessity of interdisciplinary perspectives. “We have to do a better job from the undergraduate level to the graduate level to train our students to be truly interdisciplinary,” she explained. “Because of the kinds of problems that I look at in my work, an

Many people decide to go abroad to study another culture. Hispanic Studies masters students Ana Pociello Samperiz and Naiara Porras Rentero went abroad to study both other cultures as well as their own. Both from small villages in northern Spain (“Naiara’s is smaller though,” Pociello Samperiz will quickly inform you) it was a love of the English language that brought them to America.



As students at University of Valladolid in Spain, both Pociello Samperiz and Porras Rentero studied abroad in Greece and Italy respectively and enjoyed the international experience. They both jumped at the opportunity to study and teach in the UK Department of Hispanic Studies though a program at the University of Valladolid called

One of the best-selling books of 2005 was “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” which debunked conventional wisdom and highlighted the role of statistics in getting to the bottom of our thornier questions. In a similar way, UK’s newest statistical scholars, Simon Bonner and Matthew Schofield, have focused their research on the emerging field of ecological statistics in ways that could potentially impact how we attempt to protect threatened species.

But first, just what is ecological statistics?

“As a statistician focusing on ecological problems, I'm interested in developing new statistical methodology for analyzing data from populations of wild plants and animals,” explained Bonner. “These methods might be used to monitor a threatened species, to study how a population changes over time or to determine how a species is

PhD Student by Jason Kazee

photos by Mark Cornelison



Hailing originally from Pinckneyville, Illinois, University of Kentucky statistics Ph.D. candidate Dustin Lueker is a born again Kentuckian. He moved to Mount Sterling with his family as a teenager where he attended Montgomery County High School. Lueker enrolled in Morehead State University where he completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics and then came to UK to pursue a doctorate in statistics.



“I think most people who know me were surprised to learn I chose statistics over math, but I really liked the environment and atmosphere of the stats department. It reminded me a lot of the Math Department at Morehead.” Lueker finds the close-knit culture of the smaller Statistics Department at UK to offer a degree of personal attention students in

The son of a naval architect/marine engineer, Steven C. Grambow credits his father for putting him on the path to hard sciences.

“He was my biggest influence. At a relatively young age he was the chief engineer and naval architect of a World War II Navy Shipyard in Sausalito, CA that at its peak had over 20,000 employees. He went on to have a long and successful career as an engineer and project manager in international mining and minerals. He had a brilliant mind and enjoyed studying math, physics and general science as a hobby. It definitely rubbed off on me.”

Grambow grew up in Northern California and started college at UCLA, decided to take a break for a year, and then finished his undergraduate math degree (with an emphasis in statistics) at California State University at Chico.

“One of my stats professors at Chico, Neil Schwertman, one of

Ron Eller identifies two versions of Appalachia: a real place and an imagined region. He makes this distinction because he has dedicated his career in higher education to addressing the needs of rural communities. Transcending the boundaries of the classroom and library, Eller’s research in Appalachian history and culture is motivated by his desire to help people understand Appalachia.

“Although I have written extensively about Appalachian identity and the challenges that stereotypes and images about Appalachia pose to the region, what’s most meaningful to me is the task of developing education and knowledge to make a better future for Appalachia,” said Eller.

A first-generation college graduate, native Appalachian and Professor of History at UK, Eller prefers to consider himself not as academe’s

Student Spotlight

by Rebekah Tilley

photos by Mark Cornelison



Flexibility. You want it in your joints, in your schedule and in your undergraduate major. Rising UK senior Ben Barnes found the right blend of flexibility as a Topical Studies major.



As you might think, it takes a significant amount of initiative on the part of the student to design a unique program of study, and you need a lot of clarity when it comes to knowing what you want your future career to be. “And I did,” said Barnes. “I had that clarity when I was designing the program.”



Barnes is not your typical American college student. For starters, he’s Australian, and at 24 he is also slightly older than his fellow seniors. Barnes took a few years off between

David Bradshaw, the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, focuses on the history of philosophy, specifically looking at science, technology, and society. His research incorporates a variety of disciplines to address the social, ethical, and technological significance of scientific advances.  

https://www.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/ScienceTechnologySociety_DavidBradshaw.mp3

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PhD Student

By Megan Neff

Photos by Richie Wirewan



Forgiving may seem impossible at times, but Kimberly Goard, a philosophy graduate student at the University of Kentucky, urges us to do the seemingly impossible.



Since 2006, Goard has been working toward a Ph.D. in philosophy at UK. While she personally holds the issue in high regard, she feels its scope is universal because it affects everyone in a multitude of ways.



“Forgiveness involves a whole nexus of things that happen psychologically, socially and emotionally,” said Goard.



Goard opposes the popular view in philosophy today that the value of self-respect supersedes the obligation to forgive.



“In the vast majority of contemporary philosophical thought, forgiveness

For philosophy alum Will Sanders, attending the University of Kentucky was always part of the plan. The Frankfort native’s parents both attended the university and it was natural for him to follow in their steps. Choosing a major was the challenge.

The College of Arts and Sciences was the perfect place to land when it came to finding his footing, according to Sanders.

“I started as a French major but then switched to philosophy,” Sanders said. “My interest in East Asian thought systems then led me to study Japanese and eventually Chinese.”

Sanders said he was drawn to Eastern philosophy in part because of his interest in the “beats,” a group of American writers who were popular in the 1950s and known, among other things, for

Professor of Sociology Claire Renzetti has been named the recipient of the Lee Founders Award by the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP).  The award honors the founders of SSSP, Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Bryant Lee. The Founders Award recognizes significant lifetime achievements in research, teaching, or service leading to the "betterment of human life," and commitment to social action programs that promote social justice. The award recognizes work over a distinguished career that provides understanding and insight for practical application and service at the local, state, and/or national level.

Professor Renzetti joins some notable sociologists who have received this award in the past, including Thomas C. Hood, Irving Kenneth Zola

By Rebekah Tilley

To fully appreciate Michelangelo’s David, one has to observe it from every vantage point. As a social theory student, Arnold Farr was similarly trained to approach academic fields of inquiry from the vantage point of several different disciplines. Now as an associate professor of philosophy, Farr has returned to the University of Kentucky and the Committee on Social Theory program that launched his own academic career.

As an undergraduate, Farr started out as a theatre major before switching to philosophy and religion. His journey to Kentucky was largely determined by how far he thought his car could take him.

“After college I had the opportunity to go to either Southern Seminary in Louisville or go to Baylor University and do philosophy in Texas,” recalled Farr.  “And I chose Louisville because it was closer and my car was about to