The University of Kentucky's ArtsAsia Festival breaks new ground this year with a two-day conference on Chinese art, design, film and architecture.

The ArtsAsia Festival's annual academic symposium, titled "Contested Ground: Visual Culture in China after 1989," takes place Oct. 14-15 on UK's campus.

The symposium keynote lecture by Eugene Wang, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University, will take place at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14, in the Singletary Center for the Arts President's Room.

Wang will discuss "After-Shock and After-Image: A Chinese 'Neo-realist' Painter's Engagement with the Real in the Postmedium and Post-Earthquake Situation."

According to Wang, a new dilemma confronts the Chinese “neo-realist,” painters who came of age in

By Whitney Hale

The University of Kentucky Department of Theatre will transport audiences to China in their opening production of the season, "The Monkey King: Havoc in Heaven." This family-friendly production will storm the Guignol Theatre stage Oct. 6-16.

"The Monkey King" is a classic tale of mayhem and adventure in a family-friendly setting. The performance highlights a beloved Chinese character, the Monkey King, as he raids the Grand Banquet of Immortal Peaches in search of extra lives. As a result, the central character finds himself in hot water with the Emperor and only Buddha can bail him out of his predicament. UK Theatre's "The Monkey King" will come to life through puppetry, dance, combat and colorful costumes.

by Erin Holaday Ziegler

Chad Montrie, professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, will be visiting the University of Kentucky to discuss the history of environmentalism and its connection to the modern-day struggle against mountaintop removal (MTR) on Oct. 20.

His talk, titled, "Confronting Environmental Mythology, Making a New Environmental Movement," will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 20 in the Niles Gallery of the Lucille Caudill Little Fine Arts Library.

Montrie will examine common notions about the origins and development of environmentalism in the United States, highlighting militant opposition to strip mining in Appalachia during the 1950s and 1960s as a precursor to contemporary efforts to end (MTR).

Montrie suggests that acknowledging underground miners’ critical involvement in that preceding

by Colleen Glenn

Congratulations are in order for Ramesh Bhatt, who has recently won a three-year National Science Foundation grant worth $432,751. Bhatt, a professor of Psychology at the University of Kentucky, will use the support to expand his research on the development of social functioning in infancy.

 “Bodies provide a lot of information that facilitates social functioning in adults,” Bhatt says. “However, not much research has addressed the development of knowledge about bodies. The proposed research will let us examine questions such as whether babies know how bodies are organized in terms of the relative proportions of various parts.”

For example, Bhatt will analyze how infants from 3 to 9 months of age react to systematic changes to body and face images, documenting which aspects of bodies and faces infants scan. The results will help Bhatt

By Whitney Hale

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, University of Kentucky faculty and students, as well as international guest artists, will take center stage in a tribute concert honoring the late Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca. "Llanto por Federico García Lorca," presented by UK's School of Music and Latin American Studies Program, will begin 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, at the Niles Gallery, in the Lucille C. Little Fine Arts Library and Learning Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The concert "Llanto por Federico García Lorca" will feature

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

Four years of college is four years of finding yourself socially and [sometimes] academically for many students enrolled at the University of Kentucky. The city in which a student goes about pursuing the next chapter of his or her life doesn't always come into play.  However, a new course at UK wants to change that.

UK geography professor Richard Schein hopes to shed some local, Lexington light on students this fall with a Community 101 class being offered to university students through UK's College of Arts & Sciences.

"We've been an urban society since the 1920s," said Schein. "It's important for our students to become urban citizens, understanding gentrification, immigration, school districts and other city

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