This week's topic for the Soup & Substance: Real Talk, Real Issues and Real People series is a discussion of police injustice, brutality and discrimination. The topic — "When Did My Skin Color Become a Threat?: A Discussion on Police Brutality and Discrimination" — was chosen from a student's Twitter suggestion.

2014 Thomas Hunt Morgan Speaker Series

Dr. Helen Blau is the 2014 Thomas Hunt Morgan Lecturer. Dr. Blau has been the recipient of many honors and awards over the course of her career, including a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health (1995-2005). She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

2014 Thomas Hunt Morgan Speaker Series

Dr. Helen Blau is the 2014 Thomas Hunt Morgan Lecturer. Dr. Blau has been the recipient of many honors and awards over the course of her career, including a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health (1995-2005). She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Please join the UK Appalachian Center at an Appalachian Forum with Dr. Fran Ansley, Professor Emeritus of law at the University of Tennessee Knoxville on Wednesday, November 5, 2014.  Dr. Ansley will give a talk entitled Telescoping Movements, Telescoping Time:  Five Decades of Looking for the Labor Movement  through an Appalachian Lens in the Niles Gallery from 3:30 to 5 p.m.  This is a part of the Appalachian Forum Speaker Series on Civil Rights, Labor and Environmental Movements in Appalachia.  The event is free and open to the public.

Ching Kwan Lee graduated from the University of California-Berkeley Sociology Department, and is the author of the award winning Against the Law.  Her talk analyzes the peculiarity of outbound Chinese state capital by comparing it with global private capital in copper and construction in Zambia.  Refuting the dominant narratives of "Chinese colonialism" and "south-south cooperation," comparative ethnographic data collected over a 5-year period chronicle the multi-faceted struggles that confront and differentiate these two varieties of capital entailing uneven potentials for post-colonial African development.

There will also be a small workshop on doing ethnography in China at 10AM on the same day. (Please contact Thomas Janoski at tjanos@uky.edu for details)

Professor Joel Gordon will explore the depiction of ‘normative’ religious practices and personal expressions of religious identity in recent Egyptian movies with a particular focus is on Egyptian youth.  Whereas in the past signs of piety had been restricted to either ‘traditional’ Egyptians – often in comic fashion – or political extremists, a few recent films have dared to depict ‘normal’ veiled women and bearded men and even a social environment in which questions of piety, morality and proper behavior dominate the discussions, concerns and conflicts between young Egyptians.  These films may point to a growing willingness by film artists to honestly explore social trends that have been taboo, especially as Egypt enters a new political era.

Prof. Joel Gordon: Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies, University of Arkansas; Specialist in modern Egyptian history and Arab popular culture; Author of Nasser' Blessed Movement, Revolutionary Melodrama, and Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation