By Whitney Harder

(July 16, 2015) — The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences has named Shaunna Scott as the new director of its Appalachian Studies Program and Christopher Barton as the new director of the Appalachian Center.

"Chris Barton and Shaunna Scott will make a great leadership team along with the staff of the Appalachian Center," said Ann Kingsolver, former director of both the Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies

By Rachel Lorch

The American Sociological Association (ASA) named Margaret McGladrey, Assistant Dean for Research for the College of Public Health and part-time Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, the 2015 recipient of the Student Forum Paper Award.

Comprised of more than 13,000 members, the ASA is the largest professional organization in the discipline of sociology. The association is the publisher of nine professional journals and magazines, and hosts an annual meeting for its members.  

Every year, the Student Forum Advisory Board Paper Sessions and Roundtables sub-

By Blair Hoover

(July 6, 2015) — In support of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Passport to the World Initiative and the 2015 Year of the Middle East campaign, University of Kentucky Education Abroad partnered with the college to sponsor a faculty development seminar in the Middle East focusing on contemporary issues pertinent to the region.

The seminar was developed to provide faculty members with an opportunity to gain firsthand experience with the issues concerning the region and thus, to better equip them to share their knowledge and experience with their students and subsequent international initiatives, such as developing institutional partnerships and further education abroad programming at UK.

The following faculty members were

By Chris Shoals

(July 1, 2015) — Student-athletes from all eight of Kentucky's spring sports teams combined to earn a total of 84 spots on the Southeastern Conference Spring Academic Honor Roll, Commissioner Greg Sankey announced on Tuesday.


UK's honorees included 22 baseball players, 14 softball players, 13 women’s track and field members, 13 men’s track and field members, eight women’s tennis players, four men’s tennis players, six men’s golfers and four women’s golfers.

A total of 1,191 student-athletes from around the league earned spots on the honor roll, which is based on grades from the 2014 summer, 2014 fall and 2015 spring terms. In order to make the SEC Academic Honor Roll, a student-athlete must have a 3.0 grade-point average for the preceding academic year or his/her entire collegiate career, be at least a sophomore in academic standing,

By Whitney Harder

Ryan McElhose, a University of Kentucky sociology junior, with minors in philosophy and neuroscience, recently represented the ONE Campaign, an international advocacy organization, at this year’s G7 summit in Germany.

G7, or the Group of Seven, comprises the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom and meets annually to discuss issues such as global economic governance, international security and energy policy.

McElhose joined more than 250 young campaigners representing 10 countries this past weekend, June 5-7, to call on leaders to pledge at least 50 percent of overseas aid to the least-developed countries, put girls and women

By Staff Reports

After taking first place in the Global Health Case Competition at UK, sociology's Ryan McElhose (pictured second from the right) and his teammates took to the road to compete in an international competition against 24 other universities at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Emory Global Health Case Competition is a unique opportunity for students to come together to promote awareness of and develop innovative solutions for 21st century global health issues. In 2010, EGHI opened the competition to students from other U.S. universities, and in 2012 the competition welcomed student teams from international universities.

By Whitney Hale

(May 12, 2015) — The University of Kentucky Gaines Center for the Humanities and the UK College of Arts and Sciences are teaming up to present a series of workshops on violence and the human condition. The first of several events, a workshop on political violence and how it is measured, will take place Wednesday-Friday, May 13-15, at various locations across campus. This workshop is free and open to the public.

Arts and Sciences and the Gaines Center are sponsoring a year of programming around the broad theme of "Violence and the Human Condition."  Over the course of the 2015-16 academic year, faculty members from many different UK departments will collaborate with each other and with visiting experts from other

By Jenny Wells

(May 8, 2015) — On Saturday, May 9, thousands will fill Rupp Arena to celebrate the University of Kentucky Class of 2015.

The May 2015 Commencement Ceremonies will recognize the accomplishments of undergraduate, graduate and professional students who will have completed their degrees by the end of the spring 2015 semester. Graduate and professional degrees will be conferred at 9 a.m.; and undergraduate degrees will be conferred at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m.  All ceremonies will be streamed live on UKNow. 

Saturday's ceremonies include: 

All over the world victims and perpetrators of homicide are mostly men, but when women are intentionally killed it is likely to be at the hands of men, particularly ones they know. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that almost half of all female homicide victims worldwide, but only six percent of male victims, were killed by intimate partners or family members.

Interestingly, while the total homicide rate in the United States is higher than most European countries, the percentage of homicide victims who are female is more than twice as large in Europe (28%) compared to the Americas (12%). Understanding why countries differ in the amount and types of crime is the primary focus of Assistant Professor of Sociology Janet Stamatel’s research.

In order to end violence against women, we need a better understanding of the extent, circumstances, and causes

By Gail Hairston, Whitney Harder

(April 22, 2015) — The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences will honor its faculty at 4 p.m. today at the William T. Young Library Auditorium.

The recipients of this year's college faculty awards are:

Charles Carlson, psychology, 2015-16 Distinguished Professor. For more information, visit http://uknow.uky.edu/content/carlson-honored-teaching-research-and-service

Beth Guiton, assistant professor of chemistry ‒ Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award

Guiton leads a materials chemistry group in the Center for Advanced Materials, investigates chemistry at the nanometer length scale, working at the intersection between solid

by: Lydia Whitman

(Feb. 2, 2015) — The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Science's Committee on Social Theory will host its 2015 lecture series, “Transnational Lives,” throughout the spring semester. This well-established series, organized around a different topic each year, gives the public access to lectures by four international scholars visiting the university campus to address a particular aspect of social theoretical thought from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. All lectures will be held on Fridays at 2 p.m. and are free to the public.

Committee director Marion Rust said these are among “the most exciting intellectual opportunities available to the UK community.”

By Sarah Schuetze

Despite differences in subject matter and methods, students in disciplines like biology and English have some common ground: they are part of the College of Arts and Sciences. Recently, this common ground connected two University of Kentucky alumni who graduated over 30 years apart.

Bob Burke graduated from UK with a degree in sociology in 1970 and Casey Robinson with a degree in Mathematical Economics in 2014. Their shared ties to A&S led to a valuable opportunity for Robinson, made possible by Burke. On a sunny day last spring, Robinson and Burke met for lunch

by Sarah Schuetze

Sitting at the front of the room at a seminar table crowded with more students than anyone imagined, professor Francie Chassen-Lopez said, “I always say I have one foot on either side of the border.”

Chassen-Lopez is one of the four instructors teaching Social Theory 600, a graduate seminar called “Transnational Lives.” The professors include Ana Liberato, Cristina Alcalde, and Steven Alvarez—each representing a different discipline and approach to the course. “What makes this so exciting,” Alcalde said, “is we’re all coming at this from different perspectives.”

In many ways,

by: Gail Hariston

(Jan. 22, 2015) — Global events have been happening at a rate few of us can track much less comprehend. Populism and right wing politics in Europe and Latin America could be such issues for many.

Several University of Kentucky programs, including the International Studies Program and the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences and University Press of Kentucky, have organized two events just for those

by Gail Hairston

(Dec. 4, 2014) — The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Committee on Social Theory's Fall 2014 Distinguished Speaker is Margaret Archer, professor of sociology at l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. 

The free lecture is slated at 4 p.m. Friday, Dec. 12, in the Singletary Center's President's Room.

Archer was a professor of sociology at Warwick University where she developed her Morphogenetic Approach to social theory. She now heads the project at EPFL "From Modernity to Morphogenesis."

She was elected as the first woman president of the International Sociological Association at the 12th World Congress of Sociology. She is a founding member of both the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences and is a trustee of the Centre for

(Nov. 7, 2014) – Wake up! What if you never had to hear those two words again? A recent online article for Live Science contemplated what life might look like if there were a cure for sleep, and the possible sociological impacts that would follow.

Would you be more productive, healthier, or smarter? Mairead Eastin Moloney, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Kentucky, warned against the idea that a world without sleep would be an improvement, and stressed the importance that sleep has in structuring people’s lives.

>>Read the full Live Science article here

Moloney has done additional research tied

(Nov. 6, 2014) - Professor of Sociology Dwight Billings recently appeared as a guest on BBC World Service Radio to talk about hillbilly stereotypes. Billings says there has always been an interest in the American “other” – an interest that seems to have contrasting parts of fascination and fear.

He also went on to discuss how the stereotypes of people in Appalachia have led to making the area “a sacrifice zone” when it comes to progress in the region.

Listen to the broadcast here: https://soundcloud.com/bbc-world-service/hillbilly-stereotypes

In a career that has spanned over 40 years, Billings has written groundbreaking works on Appalachia, including the book "The Road to Poverty: the Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia," for which he and co-author

By Sarah Schuetze

In a podcast recorded with A&S last year, Assistant Professor of Sociology Shannon Bell described her recent book, Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice, as a project that gives voice to her subjects: women fighting against the environmental effects of coal mining in Appalachia. These women live in regions directly affected by the environmental health costs associated with mountaintop removal coal

by Gail Hairston 

(Sept. 30, 2014) — More than an “s” has been added since the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Science was created in 1908 with only seven faculty members. In fact there was a College of Arts and Science even before the institution was named the University of Kentucky; the institution was called the State University, Lexington, Kentucky (previously Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky and State College) until 1916.

In those 106 years, several of today’s largest colleges were birthed from the original College of Arts and Science’s former programs, including today’s College of Education, College of Communication and Information, College of Social Work and College of Fine Arts.

The college grew quickly under the inspiration and commitment of President James Patterson, whose statue now graces the plaza next to the

by Abigall Shipp

(Sept. 23, 2014) — Chinese involvement in Africa and female drug dealers in Chinese prisons are the topics of this fall’s Distinguished Scholar Series, sponsored by the University of Kentucky Confucius Institute (UKCI).

Ching Kwan Lee, a sociology professor at University of California, Los Angeles, launches the series with “The Specter of Global China: Contesting the Power and Peril of Chinese State Capital in Zambia,” which explores China’s role in copper and construction in Zambia.

Sheldon Zhang, a sociology professor at San Diego State University follows Lee with “