Since 2001, when Ouita Michel and her husband, Chris, opened their flagship Holly Hill Inn in Midway, Kentucky, she has made locally grown ingredients a priority in her cuisine. Michel’s restaurants have bought $3 million of Kentucky-grown meats, dairy and produce. She has been a James Beard Foundation Award nominee numerous times; her most recent nomination was in 2020 for Outstanding Restaurateur.

Originally from Northern Virginia, Judge Winn Fleming Williams (retired) graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1971 with a double major in sociology and political science.   

George C. Wright received his bachelor’s degree in history from UK in 1972, his master’s degree in history from UK in 1974 and his Ph.D. in history from Duke University in 1977. Wright’s teaching experience began in 1997 as an assistant professor of history at UK. In 1980, he started teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, where he eventually became a full professor and the holder of the Mastin Gentry White professorship of Southern History.

Patty Cooper, born in 1949, grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her feminist consciousness and anti-war activism arose while she was an undergraduate student at Mary Washington College and Wittenberg University from 1967 to 1971. Eager to help rewrite the conventional narrative of U.S. history, Cooper started graduate studies in 1972 at the University of Maryland. She focused on women’s, Black and working-class history and held assistantships with the Booker T.

Originally from southern West Virginia, Ron Eller has spent more than 40 years writing and teaching about the Appalachian region. He served for 15 years as the director of the UK Appalachian Center where he coordinated research and service programs on a wide range of Appalachian policy issues including education, health care, economic development, civic leadership and the environment.

Born in the Jiangsu province in China, Bing Zhang arrived in the United States to study at UK in 1989. Zhang flourished at UK, diving deep into graduate statistics courses and work, tutoring in English, pursuing an active life in the Department of Statistics and experiencing life among a growing Chinese student population on campus and in the community. A successful student, Zhang earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in statistics in 1991 and 1994 respectively. He also earned a master’s in computer science from UK in 1993.

Writing Civil War History in the Twenty-First Century

Amy Murrell Taylor - 2020-21 A&S Distinguished Professor