By Sarah Geegan

Two University of Kentucky faculty members will travel to India from Jan. 29-Feb. 3 as part of a delegation formed by the Institute of International Education (IIE), to foster ties in higher education between India and the U.S.

Asia Center Director Keiko Tanaka, and Srimati Basu, associate professor of Gender and Women's studies, and will join high level administrators from 10 other U.S. colleges and universities on a study tour to Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi. They will meet with their counterparts at diverse Indian institutions to learn more about the nation's higher education system

By Sarah Geegan

Author and communication researcher Mary L. Gray will discuss how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth construct spaces for fashioning their emerging sexual identities, in the first lecture of this semester's "Place Matters" series, sponsored by the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, on Friday, Jan. 27. 

The lecture will begin at 3:30 p.m., in the Center Theatre at the UK Student Center, with a reception to follow at the UK Appalachian Center.

After Gray's lecture

By Whitney Hale

The LGBT community is quite diverse in Lexington. In hopes of representing and celebrating the population's various differences, University of Kentucky Gaines Fellow and knitter Catherine Brereton has launched the Diversity Project, which seeks to create a visual representation of the community through a large piece of yarn-art. One stitch at a time, Brereton hopes the Diversity Project will create unity.

To finish the final product, a blanket made of 144 squares, Brereton is asking the public to take part in the initiative. There are various ways to participate in the project including a knitting event this weekend beginning at 11 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 20, at Great Bagel, located at 396 Woodland Avenue in Lexington. For more information on this event, visit Facebook at 

By Kathy Johnson

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, Appalachian Studies and the Graduate Appalachian Research Community are making a call for papers for the 2012 UK Appalachian Research Symposium and Arts Showcase. The topic of the work must be related to Appalachia, original, and produced in the last three years. 

The deadline for submitting an abstract of work online is midnight Dec. 15. The submission can be made by going to the GARC tab on www.

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky creative writing Professor  Nikky Finney has won the 2011 National Book Award in Poetry for her recent work, “Head Off & Split.”  Finney attended the award ceremony last night in New York City, where she accepted the highly prestigious honor.

“Head Off & Split” was published by Northwestern University Press in February of this year, and Finney has been touring with the book since late winter.

The National Book Award website says the poems in Finney's "Head Off & Split" "sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African-American life: from Civil Rights matriarch Rosa Parks, to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning, to a terrified woman abandoned

By Whitney Hale

The University of Kentucky Special Collections Library invites the public to an exhibition and symposium celebrating the opening of the papers of Appalachian author Harriette Simpson Arnow. The event will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, in the Great Hall, of the Margaret I. King Building. The exhibition of work will run through February 2012.

Harriette Arnow’s papers at UK Libraries provide a broad look at a writer’s life and work.  Included are materials that document her writing process, from first-draft manuscripts on dime store tablets, through various iterations and drafts, to printer page proofs. Also included are correspondence with family, editors, publishers and literary agents. Researchers will find mail from

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences will host a trailblazing American diplomat next week to continue the college's Year of China initiative.

Former U.S. Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch will speak on “Leadership and Education in a Globalizing World: China’s Challenge” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in Room 118 of the White Hall Classroom Building on UK's campus.

Bloch’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the "Passport to China: Global Issues & Local Understanding" course taught by UK sociology Professor Keiko Tanaka.

Ambassador Bloch, the first Asian-American ambassador in American history, has had a broad career in U.S. government service. She is currently president of the U.S.-China Education Trust, a nonprofit

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

By Erin Holaday, Colleen Glenn

It’s almost time for class and you’re still in your dorm room. But you’re not going to be late. There’s plenty of time to walk downstairs.

Imagine what residence halls will be like in 2020. That’s what the College of Arts & Sciences did when they created a new living and learning community at Keeneland Hall.

Debuting this fall, A&S Wired houses almost 200 freshmen in a unique interactive space that combines education and residence life.

“As we envisioned what education would be like for students starting college in 2020, we knew advanced technology would be a critical component,” said Adrienne McMahan, assistant dean of

by Erin Holady Ziegler

When rising University of Kentucky senior Joseph Mann arrived in Cape Town, South Africa in mid-May, he was ready to make a difference and ready for a challenge. Little did he know that his travel abroad experience would change the course of his life.

"You just need to come here," Mann laughed. "That's what I've told my friends and family. In the face of such adversity, there's hope. South Africans know that they have a bright future. Despite issues with service availability and government incapacity, they have faith."

Mann, a psychology and gender and women's studies major at UK, has a keen interest in human

As a current board member of a company she boycotted during apartheid, Zohra Ebrahim is a dynamic testament to the New South Africa.

Ebrahim draws on her past of political activism, as well as a wealth of experience on corporate boards, to assess the role of women in contemporary South Africa.

Women have gained a great deal in the new South Africa. It is the third most equitable government in the world. Forty-five percent of parliament ministers are women.

Unfortunately, women have not entered the ranks of business in the same way. There are only 12 women on corporate boards of listed companies and only one female CEO in the whole country. Violence against women and children occurs frequently as well, due in part to the legacy of families destroyed by apartheid policies.

"South Africa has come so far so fast," Ebrahim said, "But these changes bring new

A transformative researcher of transnational processes in Appalachia, the American South and around the world will visit the University of Kentucky for the fourth and final of the Place Matters series this week.

Barbara Ellen Smith, a sociology professor and the former director of Women's and Gender Studies at Virginia Tech, will present a talk titled "Transforming Places: Towards a Global Politics of Appalachia" at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, April 14, in the John Jacob Niles Gallery. Professor Srimati Basu of the UK Department of Gender and Women's Studies and Professor Shannon Bell

The most comfortable way to understand a controversial issue is through the eyes and experience of someone like yourself — through normal, everyday people whose challenges and beliefs relate to your own.  That is the way the issue of homosexuality and its often tumultuous relationship with Christianity is told in the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" being shown at the University of Kentucky this week.

When First Run Features released "For the Bible Tells Me So" in 2007, it was the film's personal stories that made it so inspiring and powerful, according to many viewers.

UK students, faculty, staff and Lexington residents will now have the chance to experience those stories with the University of

A Different Kind of Healing

by Kathryn Wallingford

photos by Shaun Ring

Before Ericka Barbour learned about feminist scholars, before she heard the stories of men and women and their struggles to overcome society’s misconceptions of gender, and before the name “Judith Butler” meant something to her, she was on her way to becoming a doctor.

After graduating from Louisville’s Central High School Pre-Med magnet program, Barbour saw a career in the field of medicine as a means of “healing” and helping those in need. Deciding she wanted to become an OBGYN, Barbour signed up for classes in biology and chemistry as a college freshman at the University of Kentucky.

But within her first two semesters of the natural sciences, Barbour became

Graduate Student

Cracking the Code of Masculinity

by Andrew Battista

photos by Mark Cornelison

Betsy Dahms has known since her childhood that masculinity can mean a variety of things. Growing up with eight brothers and one sister, Dahms developed an acute awareness that a person’s masculinity can never be reduced to a single form or expression. It is this aspect of her family upbringing that has most significantly influenced Dahms’ budding scholarly and pedagogical career.

“My father died when I was young, so I didn’t grow up with a father-figure in my life,” said Dahms.“In my house I was able to see how my brothers were treated versus how my sister and I were treated, and I often thought to myself, ‘wow, that’s different.’”

This disparate treatment did not end when Dahms left her

Graduate Student

by Jessica Fisher

photos by Shaun Ring

Third wave feminists have lived in an era with women in space, have seen three women as Secretary of State and one almost obtain the democratic nomination for President; accomplishments second wave feminists never saw while they were growing up.

However, like many movements that have made great strides, these accomplishments are examples of token arguments. The common misconception of such success is often that the hard work is over. For Hannah Alsgaard, a University of Kentucky undergraduate student in Gender and Women Studies (GWS), this could not be further from the truth. At 21, her work encompassing women’s rights and gender and sexuality issues has in fact just begun.

In May 2009, after only three years, Alsgaard, the focused and ambitious student she is,