Central Kentucky students have the opportunity to explore a whole new world without leaving Lexington this week as the University of Kentucky Confucius Institute organized its first Spring Break Chinese Language and Chinese Culture Camp.

Students from third to sixth grade are participating in a weeklong camp April 4-8, focusing on simple Chinese language and a wide variety of cultural activities.

"This is one of the few Spring Break camps held by all the Confucius Institutes," said Director Huajing Maske. "We wanted to try something new. This year is a great learning year for us. And many parents don't get the same Spring Break as their children."

The CI's campers will have five days of varied activities, according to Maske. "Every day is different," she said.

To begin the day, campers will do the same

In the aftermath of the earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11, Japan has experienced devastation the likes of which few places have ever felt. To UK geography professor Pradyumna Karan, this disaster feels personal.

“I have been leading UK Summer Field Seminars in Japan along with professor Todd Stradford for many years. My students and I have many friends in each region that we will have for the rest of our lives.”

The earthquake and tsunami did major damage to a string of coastal settlements along Japan’s northeast coast, including the town of Taro, where Karan and his students stop each summer.

 “We study Japan’s effort to mitigate damage from tsunamis. Taro has suffered serious damage through its history,” Karan said. Hillsides in Taro indicate the run-up – the maximum height reached by a tsunami as it encounters the shore – from previous massive

Ph.D. Student

by Kathryn Wallingford

photos by Shaun Ring

Gretchen Phelps refers to her research as “SMOKE ‘n Mirrors.” While it sounds like a magic act, if you did not see Phelps and the optics set-up of her latest experiment, you might just think her research was just that.



Don’t let the title fool you. Phelps is a fourth year Ph.D. student in University of Kentucky’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and SMOKE actually stands for ‘Surface Magneto-Optic Kerr Effect,’ a technique utilized by condensed matter physicists for the reflection of polarized light by a material that is subject to a magnetic field.



Under the mentorship of UK’s Physics professor, Dr. Wolfgang Korsch

by Kathryn Wallingford

Photos by Richie Wireman and Lee Thomas



University of Kentucky French professor, Rupert T. Pickens, believes a medieval text is more than a fixed set of words and a single author, but the intersection of history, literature, and language. It is an evolving set of ideas that comes to light through the French language.



“A text has a life of its own. It is propagated through hand-writing and the transmission has created and influenced mistakes as well as additions,” said Pickens. He continued, “Before the 14th century, we do not have anything signed by just one author. But writers found a way to express their native identities through the French language.”



Since Pickens first came to the University of Kentucky in 1969, he has dissected, reviewed, and translated literally

Title: Nikky Finney Featured in Ace Weekly
Contact: Cheyenne Hohman
Page Content:

Writing is a way for life for Nikky Finney, a UK English professor and Affrilachian poet. In the March 17 issue of Ace Weekly, Bianca Spriggs writes about Finney. An accomplished writer and professor, Finney has written four books, worked as a professor in the English department for a number of years, and has traveled all over as a presenter and Affrilachian poet. 



Head Off and Split, her latest collection of poems and fourth book, is already garnering recognition and a place on the Poetry Foundation's Contemporary Best Sellers

University of Kentucky chemistry professor Allan Butterfield's work in neurochemistry and Alzheimer's research is renowned.

But Butterfield's work goes beyond the lab; his support of undergraduate and graduate research at UK is celebrated throughout campus and the Commonwealth, with every research grant and doctoral diploma awarded.

Butterfield served as UK alumnus Tanea Reed's PhD advisor during graduate school.

"He saw my potential and made me a better graduate student by making me a critical thinker," she said. "Dr. Butterfield was a wonderful mentor who was always very encouraging and supportive.  Even though I have since graduated from UK, Dr. Butterfield still plays a role in my career as a mentor."

In a seemingly perfect blending

The University of Kentucky lost one of its most dedicated and inspiring writing instructors to breast cancer last May.



The Division of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (WRDM) would like to honor Kelly Feinberg's memory with a call to UK undergraduates for personal essays exemplifying the qualities that Feinberg embodied as a writer.



"Kelly was a colleague who brought a contagious enthusiasm to any project she became involved in,” said English department doctoral candidate and teaching assistant Leah Bayens. "Her love for her family, her peers and her students was obvious."



Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Media faculty are looking for creative non-fiction, personal essays or multi-media projects that incorporate some writing element (including photography, artwork, artifacts,

Ph.D. Students

by Leah Bayens

photos by Mark Cornelison

Any language devotee knows that linguistics illuminates socio-political and bio-cultural mysteries. Apparently, it also forms the tie that binds a former theologian and a former telecommunications specialist, bringing both into the Hispanic Studies fold.

Doctoral candidates Jarrod Brown and Iván Sánchez-Medina diverged from many years of study and service in religion and business communications, respectively, and found a home in UK’s Department of Hispanic Studies precisely because of the program’s renewed emphasis on linguistic research. Despite their disparate backgrounds, and in spite of different research areas, they both use linguistics to track the continuum of presences and absences in

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

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

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

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: 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

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

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.

 

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