Skip to main content

Blogs

South Africa and Kentucky: Different Lands, Common Ground

There are going to be a lot of opportunities to foster international understanding this year. "South Africa & Kentucky: Different Lands, Common Ground," will provide the campus community as well as the general public with a closer look at the two societies’ rich histories and present-day conditions. The South Africa and Kentucky program covers topics across disciplines and formats: there will be a series of films shown, book reading groups, lectures and other presentations are slated for the 2010-2011 academic year, in addition to a course on South Africa and Kentucky.

The connections between South African history and the history of Kentucky will be explored throughout the coming year. South Africa has undergone one of the largest and most recent revolutions in our time. During this academic year, some of South Africa’s greatest social and political heroes will come to campus to interact with our students, faculty, staff, alumni and community.

Through my academic research, I have had the honor of becoming acquainted with many of the leaders in South Africa along the way, which helped catalyze UK's "South Africa & Kentucky" efforts. Some of those whom I have encountered in my studies will be joining us in Lexington to educate and inform the community and campus.

My academic work has focused on the role of technology in democracy and political movements.  Through this work, I have been fortunate enough to meet many of the people at the forefront of change in a country that has re-defined itself. Many of these individuals not only served time in prison for their beliefs in equality, but have since worked closely with Nelson Mandela on building a new South Africa.

This is a tremendous opportunity for Kentucky. We're going to be a part of the international conversation.

Inline Images: 

New Faculty in Philosophy Department

I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.  Arts & Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with some new additions to the A&S team.
 
Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Department of Philosophy.

Professor Timothy Sundell

Timothy Sundell works primarily in the philosophy of language and linguistics.  One recent area of focus has been the nature of "verbal disagreement."  Specifically, in what way should individuals distinguish between substantive disagreements and disagreements that are, in the ordinary sense, "Just semantics"?  The question has wide-ranging implications, as debates in aesthetics, ethics, and even the physical sciences have all, at one time or another, faced accusations of being merely verbal.  He draws on arguments from both philosophy and linguistics to argue that the distinction itself significantly oversimplifies the phenomena, and that many verbal disputes in fact admit of substantive adjudication.  In other words, Sundell argues that not all verbal disagreements are merely verbal disagreements.  Other ongoing projects include topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics, unified by an interest in meaning and methodology.
 

Professor Megan Wallace

Megan Wallace's primary study is in metaphysics; in particular, issues in ontology involving composition, mereology, time and modality. She is also interested in instances when philosophy of language and logic have some bearing on these issues.  She is currently working on the issue of whether objects have temporal parts.
 

Professor Natalie Nenadic

Natalie Nenadic's principal academic interests are in the history of late modern philosophy, especially the phenomenological tradition, Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas, and Hegel. She also works in philosophy of law, and related areas of ethics and social and political philosophy, where she uses a phenomenological and practical approach to address topics of sexual violence, sex equality, and international justice, the latter focusing on genocide and war crimes. Her current research centers on using Heidegger’s phenomenology and criticism of modernity to respond to the problem of today’s pervasive sexual objectification and violence against women and girls.
 

Professor Stefan Bird-Pollan

Stefan Bird-Pollan's primary research interest lies in the history of political philosophy and ethics. Part of his research centers on the debate between Kant and Hegel over how to achieve universal ethical standards. He tries to argue that any universal ethical system must be understood as developing historically and hence through social practices. He has also written on contemporary meta-ethics, criticizing the Kantian position of Christine Korsgaard. In other work, Bird-Pollan focus on Kant’s aesthetics, and on 19th and 20th Century political and social philosophy more widely.
 

New Faculty in Anthropolgy and Sociology Departments

I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.  Arts & Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with some new additions to the A&S team.
 
Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology.

Anthropology:

Kristin Monroe

Monroe is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in Middle East studies and the production of social and spatial inequalities. She pursues a range of interests through her research and teaching including cultural geography, theories of power, and political anthropology. Her current research focuses on the critical role that uses of space and mobility play in the formation of Lebanese civic culture.

Sociology:

Professor Shannon Bell

Shannon Elizabeth Bell's research interests fall at the intersections of environmental sociology, gender, and social movements, and she maintains a strong commitment to feminist research and social justice in her work. Her dissertation examines the barriers to local participation in the environmental justice movement against irresponsible mining practices in Central Appalachia. Methods of data collection and analysis included in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis, questionnaires, geospatial viewshed analysis, and an eight-month “Photovoice” project with women living in five coal-mining communities in southern West Virginia.

Professor Claire Renzetti

Claire Renzetti's areas of specialization are the sociology of gender, criminology and the sociology of law, and social movements.  Most of her research over the past 30 years has focused on violence against women, particularly economically and socially marginalized groups of women.  Renzetti's current research projects are an ethnography of faith-based organizations involved in addressing the problem of human trafficking, and a comprehensive survey of NGO service providers who respond to domestic human trafficking victims.  She is also the editor of the international, interdisciplinary peer-reveiwed journal, Violence Against Women, published monthly by Sage.

Inline Images: 

Kristin MonroeShannon BellClaire Renzetti

New faculty in Chemistry and Physics Departments

I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.  Arts & Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with these new additions to the A&S team.
 

Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics.

Ribhu Kaul (Physics)

The field of "condensed matter theory" is concerned with understanding the rich diversity of our material world from the most fundamental laws of physics, i.e. quantum mechanics.  More specifically, Ribhu’s research focuses on the consequences of quantum mechanics on systems of infinite particles. Many-body quantum physics forms the basis of our understanding of the properties of a growing number of complex materials that are being synthesized in laboratories all over the world. The enormous number of electrons in these artificial materials find themselves in an extreme environment in which they lose their individual character, acquiring a collective identity that is governed by the fascinating laws of quantum mechanics. While a theoretical description of our material world is of fundamental interest in our comprehension of nature, predictive powers over such materials are also crucial in the search for the building blocks of future technologies.
 

Sung Seo (Physics)

Sung’s research is focused on spin-orbital-charge dynamics of electrons in atomic-scale hetero-interfaces and hetero-structure materials, which can open a new route to technological breakthroughs. His educational maxim is "Helping my students to become better than myself." In this way, he wants to contribute to College of Arts and Sciences’ success in producing excellent next-generation scientists and leaders.
 

Jason DeRouchey (Chemistry)

Jason’s primary interest is in understanding electrostatic complexation and disassociation by focusing on measuring, characterizing and codifying the forces that govern the self-organization of a wide variety of biological molecules. Current research topics include protamine-DNA interactions that dictate packaging within sperm heads, the assembly and disassembly processes of various polycation-DNA complexes used in gene delivery, and investigating drug-DNA adduct forces within DNA condensates using small molecule DNA binding drugs typical for cancer and other therapies.
 

Beth Guiton (Chemistry)

Beth’s primary interest is in the synthesis of inorganic nano-materials for energy applications and their characterization, in particular using transmission electron microscopy techniques.
 

Marcelo I. Guzman (Chemistry)

Marcelo’s work focuses on the study of the interaction of light with organic compounds present in low water activity environments, such as atmospheric aerosol, clouds, and fogs. Studying decarbonylation and decarboxylation reactions in ice to simulate the photolysis of dissolved organic matter within glacial ice, is another research interest. The results will support the in situ production of anomalous carbon oxides levels detected in some ice core records.

Marcelo plans to use solid state nuclear magnetic resonance to improve the understanding of how acidity changes, and the hydration of organic molecules remains dynamic in the quasi-liquid layer of ice and snow. This research is relevant to food chemistry, atmospheric chemistry, and cryogenic storage.

A more recent project of astrobiological relevance is the search for the abiotic origin of metabolism, and the study of mineral surface photoelectrochemistry as a pathway to reduce inorganic carbon and form organic precursors necessary for the origin of life. He would like some of the new students to continue this work in the direction of producing fuels (organic molecules feedstock) from carbon dioxide via photoelectrochemical reactions.

 

Inline Images: 

Ribhu KaulBeth GuitonMarcelo Guzman

New Faculty in Mathematics and Statistics Departments

I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.  Arts & Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with these new additions to the A&S team.

Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics.

Kathleen Ponto (Mathematics)

Every airport map has a "you are here" point. There is a theorem in topology that says this always must be the case. Kathleen Ponto studies what happens to these kinds of points when you consider more complicated spaces - more dimensions, more twists and turns. She is particularly interested in ways to describe how many "you are here" points there are for a given map. These types of questions originally came up in geometric topology. Kathleen uses techniques from algebraic topology (especially stable homotopy theory) and higher category theory in her approach.
 

Matthew Schofield (Statistics)
 

Matthew Schofield is most interested in Bayesian statistics, hierarchical modeling, capture-recapture modeling, and ecological statistics. His current projects include: modeling abundance in capture-recapture experiments with individual-specific covariates, and reconstructing historical climate using tree-ring data.
 

Simon Bonner (Statistics)
 

Simon Bonner received his PhD in statistics from Simon Fraser University in 2008 and has been working as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. His primary research focuses on the development of new statistical methods for analyzing ecological and environmental data. In his MSc and PhD research, he worked on Bayesian methods for analyzing data from mark-recapture studies of wild animal populations and has applied these techniques to data collected from studies of threatened salmon populations along the Pacific coast of North America and from bird banding studies in Canada and Europe.

More recently, Simon has been working in the area of functional data analysis, adapting these methods to study the effects of climate-change and large-scale climate phenomena (like the El-Nino/La-Nina cycle) on weather in the province of British Columbia, Canada. 

 

Inline Images: 

PontoSchofieldBonner

New Faculty Joining us this Semester

I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.  Arts & Sciences is fortunate to have 25 new instructors joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with these new additions to the A&S team.

Allow me to introduce these two new faculty members in the Department of Hispanic Studies.

Mariana Amato specializes in Latin American literary and intellectual history from the 19th century onward. Mariana has written articles on the works of Mansilla, Lugones, Bellatin, Pauls and Quiroga. She is working on a manuscript that explores figures of the animal and the flesh in Latin American fiction of the 20th century.

Moises Castillo is a teacher and researcher in the area of Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture, specifically in Early Modern and Colonial Studies (16th and 17th centuries). His primary focus is on the study of the theater and the works of Cervantes.

Inline Images: 

Mariana AmatoMoises Castillo

Online Course Offerings Enhance Educational Opportunities for Students

This summer the College of Arts and Sciences has expanded its curriculum to include online course offerings. I recently talked with UK President Lee Todd on WUKY's podcast "UK Perspectives" about the process of integrating technology into A&S, and I am honored to have been able to discuss the exciting progress that A&S has made as a whole.

To listen to our conversation, click here