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Title: Brad Plaster's Department of Energy Grant Renewed Contact: Brian Connors Page Content:
by Guy Spriggs

Physics & Astronomy professor Brad Plaster was recently awarded a renewal of his Outstanding Junior Investigator in Nuclear Physics Award from the Department of Energy (DOE). Plaster was originally awarded this grant in 2008, and his renewed grant includes a 50% increase in funding level.
“I was very excited to learn that the DOE decided to renew my grant,” Plaster said.

The research supported by Plaster’s grant concerns high-precision tests of the fundamental symmetries of parity and time-reversal in experiments with neutrons. Plaster hopes to find an electric dipole
Alecia Fields

Undergraduate Spotlight

by Colleen Glenn

Experience is the best teacher. Just ask Alecia Fields. Having recently returned from Africa, Fields knows firsthand how invaluable direct experience can be.

Fields, a 2010 graduate, spent time this summer in Ethiopia as a participant in the Sierra Club's Global Population & Environment Study Tour. One of three activists selected to spend 10 days in Ethiopia as a volunteer, Fields visited various sites and organizations around the country to learn about the impacts of population growth on the environment.

>>View Alecia's photos from Ethiopia

“It’s places like Ethiopia that climate change is really showing its effects the most,”

By Rebekah Tilley

In 1973, Thomas Janoski was living out of backpack in India getting desperate for money. A fellow traveler told him he could sell his well-worn American passport for around $500, though if he were British he could get $1000.

Why in the world would a British passport be worth twice what an American passport is worth?” Janoski asked then. “At the time you could get into any country in the Commonwealth of Nations with a British passport. That episode peaked my interest in terms of passports as a symbol of citizenship.”

In his recently released book from Cambridge University Press, “The Ironies of Citizenship,” Janoski wipes the

 

by Kami L. Rice
photos by Mark Cornelison

Gifted early on with an ease in learning new languages, Haralambos Symeonidis began travelling the world well before he got his first passport stamped.

Born and raised in the town of Drama in the Macedonia region of northern Greece, Symeonidis began his lifelong foray into languages naturally enough, by learning his native tongue. From that beginning, though, there has been little pause in his acquisition of new grammatical forms and vocabulary lists.

In his youth, Symeonidis decided to learn English after watching television shows broadcast in the language, and then he moved on to formal education and six years of studying French. During these school years, Symeonidis was also required to take courses in classical Greek,

An exhibition on the results of the excavations by University of Kentucky faculty of an ancient Greek fort will debut at the Lexington Public Library - Central Library before moving to Italy, where it will remain on permanent display.

"A Greek Mountain Fort in Southern Italy. University of Kentucky Archaeological Investigations at Monte Palazzi (Passo Croceferrata, Grotteria, Calabria)" will be on exhibit March 26 through May 1, in the library’s gallery.

Paolo Visonà, adjunct associate professor of art history in UK’s Department of Art, will give a lecture on the Monte Palazzi archaeological project at 6 p.m. Monday, March 28, in the library's theater. A gallery reception will also be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, April 15. The

In response to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku area of Japan, the UK Japan Studies program, in collaboration with the UK Asia Center, has organized a "Forum on the Great East Japan Earthquake" from 4:10- 6:10 p.m., Monday, March 28 in the William T. Young Library Auditorium.

Masamichi Inoue, Japan Studies director and professor in UK's Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures, has family in Japan. While Inoue's Japanese relatives stayed out of harm's way, the anthropologist spent four years as an undergraduate in Sendai, one of the areas worst hit by the tsunami.

"I used to walk along the same beaches that are now destroyed," he said. "Everything was so shocking to me, and the availability of information on Japan was overwhelming. Still, I felt that I had to do something."

Inoue encourages faculty, staff,

Title: Former Black Panther Visits UK Contact: Cheyenne Hohman Page Content: by Erin Holaday Ziegler


 University of Kentucky students will have the opportunity to ask a nationally-renowned human rights activist, educator and former Black Panther Party (BPP) member questions of their own on campus this week.
UK history professor Jakobi Williams will conduct an intimate interview with Ericka Huggins in “Up Close and Personal: A Conversation with Professors Ericka Huggins and Jakobi Williams" at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 24, in the Student Center Ballroom. Students are also encouraged to come with questions of their own.
 
Huggins is a former Black Panther Party leader and former political prisoner. She has spent the last 25 years lecturing throughout the United States about

Title: Sarah Lyon’s New Book: Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content:
Anthropology professor Sarah Lyon’s New Book: Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets has just been released.

Lyon's ethnographic analysis of fair-trade coffee analyzes the collective action and combined efforts of fair-trade network participants to construct a new economic reality. Focusing on La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto, a cooperative in San Juan la Laguna, Guatemala, and its relationships with coffee roasters, importers, and certifiers in the United States, "Coffee and Community" argues that while fair trade does benefit small coffee-farming communities, it is more

Title: 'The Art of Persuasion' in Wartime
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content: by Whitney Hale and Dorothy Freeman

A new exhibition of poster art from World War I at the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky examines the use of the art form as a propaganda tool in wartime, while also providing a glimpse into life on the home front during that time. "World War I and the Art of Persuasion," on view through May 8, features rarely exhibited American, French and German war posters drawn from UK Special Collections Library and three private collections. This exhibition is free and open to the public.
 
The iconic image of Uncle Sam telling Americans "I Want You" is among the most recognizable posters included in the exhibition. Like many, it conveys a simple message with few words

Title: Kelly Jo Feinberg Memorial Essay Contest Contact: Cheyenne Hohman Page Content:
In May 2010, UK lost one of its most dedicated and inspiring writing instructors, Kelly Feinberg, to breast cancer. The Division of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media would like to honor her memory with the Kelly Jo Feinberg Memorial Essay Contest.

For more details, see the event flier, or see specifications below.

The contest is open to all University of Kentucky Undergraduates, and asks for personal essays exemplifying the qualities that Kelly embodied as a writer:

•   Voice. Speak with a compelling, authentic voice. Put yourself on the page.        
 
•   Compassion. Demonstrate passion

Title: Speaker Examines Appalachia Through Food
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content: by Erin Holaday Ziegler

You can tell a lot about a girl from the type of barbecue she prefers. So, do the connections between ketchup, mustard or vinegar, collards or corn — carry cultural weight beyond the calories? University of Texas American studies Professor Elizabeth Engelhardt would most likely say yes.

Engelhardt will present the third of the University of Kentucky's Place Matters series, titled "Gathering Wild Greens: Foodways Lessons from Appalachia’s Global Past" at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, March 24 in the John Jacob Niles Gallery.  UK English professors Erik Reece and Randall Roorda will participate as discussants in Engelhardt's lecture.
 
"I want to talk about how our myths of

Title: Gender & Women's Studies Hosts Film 'For the Bible Tells Me So'
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content: by Erin Holaday Ziegler

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

Title: Hit Songs Offer Window into Society's Psyche
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content: by Erin Holaday Ziegler

Popular music is doing more than entertaining society, it's giving a University of Kentucky researcher a window into how society is changing and apparently becoming more self-loving.

UK psychology Professor Nathan DeWall was listening to Weezer's 2008 hit "The Greatest Man that Ever Lived" last summer, when he had an observation.  "They’re marketing this towards an audience who has never loved themselves more," he thought, while listening to the "I'm the greatest man that ever lived" lyrics strewn throughout the chorus. "What’s the connection here?" DeWall asked.
 
DeWall and his colleagues at UK, the University of Georgia and San Diego State University wanted to use culture to measure social change over time. Since

Title: UK Welcomes South African Visitors
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content: by Erin Holaday Ziegler

They went from 33 degrees Celsius to 33 degrees Fahrenheit. However, leading South African historian and sports figure Andre Odendaal and his wife, Zohra Ebrahim, the recently appointed chairperson of South Africa's Social Housing Regulatory Authority, have been impressed by the warm welcome of Central Kentucky residents, as well as the robust academic support of the University of Kentucky.
 
Both possess profiles that few men and women have attained in social work, business, sports, academia, history and politics, but they are humbly tight-lipped when asked to describe these accolades in detail.
 

Jenny Mooney Ph.D. Student

by Saraya Brewer
photos by Mark Cornelison

With both a Master’s and a doctoral degree under her belt in the past eight years, you’d probably be safe to call Jenny Mooney an academic. Much of Mooney’s time over the past decade has been spent not in the classroom or library, however, but in various prisons and drug and alcohol treatment and research centers. For the most part, Mooney’s work – academic work and career work intertwined – has been centered at the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research (CDAR), where she has conducted what she estimates to be thousands of interviews with research participants who identify themselves as substance users, most of them inmates. Mooney currently serves as a study director at CDAR for two studies funded by the

Title: University of Kentucky Archaeological Field School Contact: Brian Connors Page Content:
Fox Farm: A Fort Ancient Village ( A.D. 1100-1650), Mason County, Kentucky
June 9 - August 4, 2011

Fox Farm is one of the largest Fort Ancient sites in the Ohio River valley. It sits on a broad, gently rolling ridgetop about 60 miles north of Lexington, near Maysville, Kentucky. Prehistoric village farming peoples, whom archaeologists call “Fort Ancient,” lived at Fox Farm from about A.D. 1100 to 1650.

Research at the site spans more than a century. It has documented a long-term, intensive occupation, marked by thick cultural deposits, evidence of structure rebuilding, and multiple plazas, mounds, and cemeteries.

Title: Black Women's Conference Upcoming
Contact: Brian Connors
Page Content:
by Erin Holaday

The University of Kentucky African American Studies and Research
Program
hopes to empower activism throughout the 17th Annual Black
Women's Conference
on March 19, 23 and 24.

This year's conference,
themed "Activism in the 21st Century" will provide an opportunity for
participants to look at past, present and future opportunities for community
action, through local and regional guests, as well as lectures by Spelman
College activist Asha Jennings and former Black Panther Party member and human
rights activist Ericka Huggins, a gender and women's studies professor at San

When the University of Kentucky's Environmental Studies program director position opened up last summer, chemistry Professor David Atwood enthusiastically submitted his application.
 
But UK's resident expert on the removal of metal contaminants from water wanted to see something more.
 
"In working with others across campus, I was hearing more and more about the need for an interdisciplinary environmental studies major at UK," Atwood explained. "I thought that in order to really make the director position worth it, we should expand what we already had."
 
So, Atwood met with Dean Mark Kornbluh with argument in hand.
 
But to Atwood's surprise, Kornbluh

When the University of Kentucky's Environmental Studies program director position opened up last summer, chemistry Professor David Atwood enthusiastically submitted his application.
 
But UK's resident expert on the removal of metal contaminants from water wanted to see something more.
 
"In working with others across campus, I was hearing more and more about the need for an interdisciplinary environmental studies major at UK," Atwood explained. "I thought that in order to really make the director position worth it, we should expand what we already had."
 
So, Atwood met with Dean Mark Kornbluh with argument in hand.
 
But to Atwood's surprise, Kornbluh "basically described exactly what I had hoped to do," Atwood laughed. "I guess you don't

Whitney Turientine

International Studies, Sophomore 

by Joy Gonsalves

International Studies is as promising a program as sophomore Whitney Turientine, is a young scholar. “I always wanted to be an International Studies major,” Turientine began. “I’ve taken Spanish since second grade. I was the one in our family who was always watching travel shows on TV, but I’ve had questions about the world, politically, that no one’s been able to answer.”

Not surprisingly, soon after hearing the International Studies program had been added to the College of Arts & Sciences, Whitney decided to change her Political Science major to a minor and keep Spanish as a second major. The newness of the IS program didn’t deter her: “It’s growing and flexible,” she said, citing its strong recruitment potential as a major broad in scope. She also looks