News
By Gail Hairston
This spring’s Anthropology Colloquium/Inclusive Excellence Decolonizing the Academy Lecture is “Yo Amo Mi Pajón: Afro-Dominicanness and the Natural Hair Movement in the Dominican Republic and Beyond” presented by Kimberly Eison Simmons, associate professor of anthropology and African American studies and associate dean of the South Carolina Honors College at the University of South Carolina.
Simmons will speak at 5 p.m. today (Monday), April 3, in Room 118 White Hall Classroom Building on the University of Kentucky campus.
A reserved luncheon is slated with Simmons as the special guest with UK faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, in the Alumni Gallery of the William T. Young Library.
Immediately after Simmons’ lecture, there will be a dinner reception in the lobby just outside Room 118 White Hall
By Gail Hairston
University of Kentucky graduate student in anthropology, Mary Elizabeth Schmid, won the Eric R. Wolf Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Work for her paper "Tomatoes and Temporality: Political Economies of Time in the Fresh-Market Tomato Industry in the Southeastern U.S." The award is presented by the American Anthropological Association.
Schmid's dissertation research is making original contributions to a number of fields. Her findings contest the stereotypes about Latino workers in southeastern agriculture and global circulations of labor and commodities. She is studying binational Latin@ family agricultural enterprises in Mexico and the southeastern U.S.
Schmid is finding that women have an important role in these production and marketing networks, a contribution often overlooked in the literature. Latin@
Martínez Novo Receives ACLS Fellowship to Complete Her Book About Indigenous Rights in Latin America
By Gail Hairston
University of Kentucky Associate Professor of Anthropology Carmen Martínez Novo has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship for the year 2017-2018.
She will use it to complete her new book, tentatively titled “The Decline of Indigenous Rights in Latin America.” Martínez Novo will address the following questions:
What explains the retrenchment of indigenous rights in Latin America after several decades of social movement growth and of increasing inclusion of indigenous peoples in Latin American democracies? How is the deterioration of indigenous rights linked to political economic transformations such as renewed state dependency on the extraction of oil and minerals? Are left wing administrations more vulnerable to dependency on natural resource extraction due toBy Lori Minter
A record number of students made the University of Kentucky Dean's List for the fall 2016 semester. The 7,408 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance. That's an increase of more than 200 over the previous record reached in fall 2015 when the number of students on the UK Dean's List surpassed 7,000 for the first time. Last semester's Dean's List includes over 700 more students than the spring 2016 semester's list.
To make a Dean’s List in one of the UK colleges, a student must earn a grade point average of 3.6 or higher and must have earned 12 credits or more in that semester, excluding credits earned in pass-fail classes. Some UK colleges require a 3.5 GPA to make the Dean’s List.
The full Dean's List can be accessed by visiting www.uky.edu/PR/News/
By Gail Hairston
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has launched a major initiative to transform the culture of graduate education and to implement changes that will broaden the career preparation of a doctoral student beyond a teaching career. The University of Kentucky and 27 other colleges and universities received a total of $1.65 million in grants to plan the transformation.
UK’s program, Careers Beyond the Professoriate, will provide resources and support to humanities and social science graduate students who are interested in exploring diverse career paths. Careers Beyond the Professoriate is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and a NEH Next Generation Humanities PhD Grant.
As
By Gail Hairston
Two University of Kentucky graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Anthropology have been awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, and an anthropology alumna will be conducting her research at University of Cambridge.
Daniel Joseph, a fourth year doctoral student from Les Cayes, Haiti, was awarded an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) to conduct research on people of Haitian descent, many of whom had lived their whole lives in Dominican Republic until their deportation in recent years. Joseph is conducting cultural anthropological research in the refugee camps in Haiti, near the border of Dominican Republic. He hopes to understand how identity plays into these historical relations of race, colonialism and entwined economies. For more information about Haiti and Dominican Republic, visit
One of the benefits of a large research university is the opportunity it provides undergraduates to study a wide variety of disciplines while working with nationally recognized scholars. In order to promote these types of educational experiences for students, the Office of Undergraduate Research offers Research and Creativity Grants during the summer term.
“Receiving this grant has changed my life in more ways than one,” said Michael Steenken, anthropology senior and 2016 Summer Research Grant recipient. “I have been given the opportunity to explore my curiosities and passions with the guided help of various professionals. I have had the ability to fall even more in love with the area of study that has always fascinated me. I have been able to gain a basic foundation in how to conduct academic research.”
Under faculty advisor David Pollack, Steenken’s research focused
By Kevin Kiernan
In the late summer of 2016, University of Kentucky archaeologist Richard Jefferies and his crew of graduate and undergraduate students returned to Sapelo Island to continue work on the Sapelo Island Mission Period Archaeological Project (or SIMPAP). Over the past 13 years, Jefferies and his colleague Christopher Moore, of the University of Indianapolis, have systematically investigated an expansive area north of the famous shell rings on Sapelo Island (Site 9Mc23). With a combination of extensive shovel probing, unit excavation, and geophysical prospection, the archaeologists have uncovered a wide range of mission-era evidence, including sherds of Spanish majolica pottery, pieces of olive jars, wrought-iron nails, glass beads, a small brass bell, an elegant cloth-covered button plausibly from a vestment, Altamaha sherds, and much evidence of Guale-Spanish
By Samantha Ponder
University of Kentucky alumna Rebecca Adkins Fletcher is one of the editors of the new book "Appalachia Revisited: New Perspectives on Place, Tradition, and Progress," published by University Press of Kentucky (UPK). The book's contributors explore how the Appalachia region has changed in recent years.
"Appalachia Revisited" is the story of how the Appalachia region is being viewed within and beyond its borders. Fletcher and co-editor, William Schumann, gather both scholars and nonprofit practitioners to explore how Appalachia is being observed after some of its most recent changes.
Inside the new book, readers will find a variety of different topics that are being studied, including race and gender, environmental
By Whitney Hale
University of Kentucky Office of Nationally Competitive Awards has announced that six UK students and alumni have been selected as recipients of Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarships. The UK recipients are among more than 1,800 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2016-17 academic year through the prestigious program.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study, conduct research, and/or teach English abroad.
Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than
George Crothers, a University of Kentucky expert in prehistoric archaeology, has spent the better part of 30 years in the shadow-draped, surreal underworld of Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave system, searching for prehistoric as well as historic treasures of humanity’s adventures underground.
Although it’s one of those never-quite-finished projects — there are hundreds of miles of underground labyrinths and chambers, after all — the UK associate professor of
By Gail Hairston, Weston Loyd
(April 22, 2016) — The University of Kentucky Graduate School has adopted an online service, Versatile PhD, that will benefit students, faculty and alumni seeking careers in the humanities and social sciences.
“A growing number of graduate students are drawn to careers outside of traditional academic paths. In a survey of UK graduate students conducted earlier this year, 82 percent of the respondents indicated they are planning or considering alternate-academic or non-academic careers,” Morris A. Grubbs, assistant dean in the Graduate School and director of graduate student professional
Janie-Rice Brother, an architectural historian of the Kentucky Archaeological Survey recently received the UK Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies' Campus and Community Excellence in Writing award for her blog titled Architecture and Landscapes from the Bluegrass and Beyond.
Brother has over 15 years of cultural resource experience in the Ohio River Valley, the Mid-Atlantic, and southeast. Prior to coming to UK, Brother spent four years at the Kentucky Heritage Council, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), where she was responsible for review of the above-ground Section 106 projects in the state. While at the SHPO, she oversaw a county-wide survey that culminated in the documentation of over 800 rural and urban resources and numerous public presentations.
Brother studies the landscape of Kentucky and blogs about its vanishing heritage.
By Gail Hairston
(March 31, 2016) — Teachers, parents and schoolchildren in Kentucky and around the world have a new online resource to learn about the history of Lexington’s extraordinary Davis Bottom neighborhood, the “Teaching Through Documentary Art: Lessons for Elementary and Middle School Social Studies Teachers” series.
Inspired by two stunning murals featured in the award-winning documentary “Davis Bottom, Rare History, Valuable Lives,” the innovative lesson plans were developed by archaeologists and educators with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey (KAS), jointly administered by the University of Kentucky’s Department of Anthropology and the Kentucky Heritage Council, and the Davis Bottom History Preservation
American Archaeology, a national magazine, recently highlighted the work on Anthropology graduate student, Stuart Nealis. Nealis is a student of Dr. George Crothers, Director of State Archaeology and the William S. Webb Museum.
Within the article, Nealis' research on the newly renamed Town Square Bank Mound, a large Woodland-period mound in Northern Kentucky, is mentioned. To read more about Nealis' research on the mound, view the full article from American Archaeology here.
By Allison Elliott-Shannon
(Oct. 22, 2015) — Open Access is a consistent theme in university libraries across the world, as researchers seek to share and collaborate in new ways. “Open for Collaboration” is the theme of Open Access Week 2015, a global event taking place Oct. 19–25. As scholars, research institutions and funding agencies acknowledge the benefits of open access, they have made an increasing number of scholarly content freely available online for people to reuse and build upon for innovation.
An advocate for open access, University of Kentucky Libraries has forged collaborative partnerships with various campus units to enable free online access to unique
By Gail Hairston
(Oct. 6, 2015) — The images of untold thousands of people — many of them children — escaping the horror and despair of the war-ravaged Middle East are seared in the memories of anyone even semi-aware of global events in recent months.
Newscasters and reporters around the world have failed to find the words to adequately describe and explain the tsunami of humanity that washed upon the shores or stumbled across the borders of European nations. So many questions and so few answers.
A panel of nine experts from six disciplines was formed by the University of Kentucky’s International Studies Program and its director Sue Roberts to help the campus community
By Whitney Hale
(Aug. 28, 2014) — One week remains for students to apply for the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) Learning Lab internship. The SCRC Learning Lab is a center of primary research, experiential learning, and training targeted to UK undergraduates in various disciplines who want to enhance their studies through training in archival methods and theory. Applications for fall and spring internships are due Friday, Sept. 4.
Interns with the SCRC Learning Lab will be taught to arrange and describe rare or unique collections in their area of research interest, and enhance access to those collections through the broader academic community through
By Jenny Wells
(Aug. 26, 2015) — The University of Kentucky Chellgren Center for Undergraduate Excellence honored its newest class of Chellgren Fellows Sunday, Aug. 23. Five Chellgren Endowed Professorships were also announced.
The Chellgren Fellows Program is for students with exceptional academic potential and aspirations, who are eager to participate in a special learning community designed to cultivate extraordinary achievement. Outstanding faculty members from across campus serve as individual mentors for the Fellows.
The students selected as 2015-16 Chellgren Fellows include:
• Sloan Ander, a