Monday, November 28, 2011

New Course for Spring 2012

Spring 2012
ANT 770: Anthropology of Youth
Mondays 1-3:30pm
Instructor: Kristin Monroe


Historically, anthropology’s interest in children and youth focused on cultural development—the ways in which culture is transmitted to younger people— and thus attended mainly to rites of passage, the development of gender roles, liminality, and, in general, the transition from childhood into adulthood. More recently, anthropologists have begun to consider more closely the perspectives of youth and the specific challenges they face. Conceiving of young people as cultural agents, rather than as ‘recipients’ of culture, cultural anthropologists in recent decades have looked closely at their lives and experiences. This course delves into both the historical and recent anthropological literature on youth, as well as critical social theory, in order to demonstrate the diverse approaches one can take in studying and representing youth as well as the unique methodological issues raised by undertaking research with this social group. We will consider recent ethnographic recent work about children and youth in relation to a range of topics including media and consumption, language, music, style, human rights, race and ethnicity, and queer studies.

Another Spring TA Position

New Graduate Assistantship Available in UKIT!

UK Information Technology seeks a qualified, full-time MA or PhD student for a graduate assistantship in the Academic Technology Group. The graduate assistant will be a leading member of the Blackboard Scholars team, a student group that provides training and support to faculty who use campus learning systems, including Blackboard, Adobe Connect, Echo360, TurningPoint clickers, and iTunes U.

Duties will include working closely with ATG staff to help schedule, train, and supervise the Scholars, assisting faculty in the use of a variety of educational technology tools, and helping design and teach faculty workshops. The GA will be expected to develop and maintain a collaborative relationship with staff members in ATG's campus partners and to coach the Scholars in pedagogical "best practices" for effective educational technology use. He or she may also be expected to attend and/or give occasional presentations on topics related to education or technology.

The ideal candidate will:
     have a strong background in education, communication, information science, curriculum design, or a related field;
     have experience in teaching, team leadership, and/or technology support;
     be familiar with at least two of the learning systems in use at UK;
     have excellent speaking, writing, and interpersonal skills; and
     be proactive, self-motivated, and communicative in regards to work-related activities.

This is an one-semester full assistantship beginning in January 2012 and renewable for the 2012-2013 school year. The position requires an average of 20 hours/week primarily scheduled during business hours (M-F 8-5) and the occasional early evening. Compensation includes a tuition scholarship, health insurance, and $240/week stipend. Summer hours will be available and compensated at $12/hour.

The selection process will be competitive. Applicants must have a minimum 3.0 GPA and be in good academic standing with their respective department and if hired, must maintain this status throughout their employment as a GA. For further information about compensation or eligibility, visit http://www.research.uky.edu/gs/StudentFunding/tuition.html.

For full consideration, a cover letter and CV must be included with the UK online employment application. Submission of additional documents, such as a letter of recommendation or sample of previous work, is encouraged, but not required.

To apply, please visit http://ukjobs.uky.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=230775

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

TA Position Available This Spring!

We have an opening for a half-time teaching assistant this spring to teach one section of EPE301.

EPE 301 explores the context of teaching and learning in American society, both within and outside of the classroom. EPE 301 critically examines different perspectives on education and culture, explores anxieties and aspirations about schools, the ways popular culture influences schooling, and the impact of race, class, gender, ethnic, and regional dynamics, both past and present, on teaching and learning. EPE 301 considers what roles schools play in constructing and perpetuating both inequalities and opportunities as well as the specific dimensions and practices of schools which marginalize or privilege particular groups of people.

Students interested in this teaching opportunity should contact Dr. Alan DeYoung (ajdey@coe.uky.edu) as soon as possible.  Decisions will need to be made quickly to prepare for January start.

KUDOS!

Congratulations to John Thelin, who was awarded the Association for the Study of Higher Education's (ASHE) 2011 Research Achievement Award this past week at ASHE's annual conference in Charlotte, N.C.  This award, as described by ASHE, is "presented presented for outstanding contribution to research to an individual whose published work (theoretical, empirical or applied) advances understanding of higher education in a significant way. The Research Achievement Award may acknowledge a body of research or a single piece of meritorious research."

Congrats as well to Dr. Nikki Knutson (SHED) on her successful defense last week.  

And Kudos to Leslie Woltenberg (SHED) on her successful qualifying exam yesterday.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

“Chinese Education in a Changing Society”


UK Confucius Institute Speaker Series  presents “Chinese Education in a Changing Society” by Professor Wang Juefei.

Time:  3:00pm,  Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Place: Young Library 

Dr. Juefei Wang is Professor of Education Emeritus of the University of Vermont and Program Director of the Freeman Foundation.  He founded the University of Vermont Asian Studies Outreach Program and served as its director for 14 years.  In that role he created a statewide program for Asian studies in schools in Vermont, organized more than 1,000 teachers, school administrators, and high school and college students to visit China, Japan, and Thailand, and assisted Vermont schools in offering content on Asia.   In 2003, the program received the inaugural Prize for Excellence in International Education from Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Asia Society.  Dr. Wang has published extensively in international education and comparative education, and has made presentations on American and Chinese education nationally and internationally.  He received his M.Ed. in comparative education at Beijing Normal University, and M. Ed. in Foundational Studies of Education and Ed. D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Vermont.           

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The latest issue of "On Campus with Women", AAC&U's newsletter
for their women's group, has several interesting articles.

http://www.aacu.org/ocww/volume40_2/contents.cfm

Articles include: 
Gender in Global Context: A Programmatic Model
Amy Jamison, Lisa Fine, and Anne Ferguson
The Long Trajectory toward Global Women's Studies
Karen Torjesen

Women and Education in the Early Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective
Nelly P. Stromquis
Collaborating across Disciplines on Global Women's Education
Susan Bourque and Rosetta Marantz Cohen

     Mentoring Appalachia's Future Women Leaders
     Shea Daniels
 
 
Thanks to Randolph Hollingsworth for calling this issue to
 attention. 

Monday, November 14, 2011

Faculty Position in Higher Education at University of Louisville

Education and Human Development
Department of Leadership, Foundations, Human Resource Education

Tenure or tenure track faculty position in Higher Education Administration, open rank

The Department of Leadership, Foundations and Human Resource Education in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville invites applications for a tenure or tenure track faculty position in Higher Education Administration.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Appointments are for ten-month periods with the option of summer employment. Responsibilities include teaching graduate courses (both on campus and on-line), advising, conducting research, seeking grant funding, participating in ongoing program development and governance, mentoring doctoral students through the completion of dissertations, and providing service to the college, university, professional associations and discipline-related community partners.

We seek individuals with research interests and professional experience in higher education administration and policy. Successful applicants should have teaching and research interests in two or more following areas: educational resource management, educational leadership, and history of American colleges and universities. This program focuses on the study of colleges and universities as organizations and is not a student affairs program.

Minimum Qualifications:
• Doctoral degree in Higher Education or a closely related field (outstanding ABDs
considered, if completing degree by August 2012)
• Demonstrated success or the potential for success in teaching in the classroom and online
courses in the field of higher education
• Demonstrated excellence in scholarly research at the national or international level or a
promising program of research in the areas listed above
• Demonstrated commitment to diversity and students from multicultural communities and
backgrounds
• Evidence of successful partnership experiences in diverse settings
• Willingness to work collaboratively with other faculty, students, and staff.

Preferred Qualifications:
• Associate or Professor level candidate preferred
• Demonstrated successful history of grant writing and grant-funded research (preferred)



Higher Education Administration Search Committee
C/o Dr. Bridgette Pregliasco
Department of Leadership, Foundations and Human Resource Education
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky 40292
(502) 852-4563 FAX
Email: bridgette.pregliasco@louisville.edu

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Lecture: "Blackout: LGBT issues and the Black Community"

Title of Talk:  Gay is NOT the new Black: The Consequences of Essentializing Race
and Sexual Orientation
Dr. Kaila Story
Tuesday, November 15, 6pm
MLK Cultural Center, UK

Abstract: The recent popularized rhetoric that the LGTBQ’s community pursuit of
civil liberties in many ways mirrors African Americans past and current struggles
for freedom is not only a negation of how these two movements emerged and fought for
freedom, but it also has dire consequences for grassroots or collegial attempts at
reconciling issues of white racism within the queer community and combatting
internalized homophobia within both communities. Many of the issues that eroded the
relationships between various gay and lesbian organizations in early 50s and 60s are
still very much present within communities today. White racism, male sexism, and
homophobia have proved to many LGBTQ people of color that their struggle for social
justice would have to be made in a unique and separate way. This talk, will discuss
the sordid history of LGTBQ rights in the United States, racism within the LGBTQ
community, and ideas for the ways in which communities of color that exist within
LGBTQ community can come together in the pursuit of justice and freedom.

Kaila Adia Story, Bio
(Ph.D., African American Studies & Women’s Studies Temple University M.A., African
American Studies Temple University; B.A. Women’s Studies DePaul University) is an
assistant professor and currently holds the Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender
and Sexuality in the Departments of Women’s & Gender Studies & Pan-African Studies
at the University of Louisville. Dr. Story has created and taught courses such as
Black Lesbian Lives, Introduction to LGBTQ Studies, Black Feminisms in Action, Queer
Perspectives in Literature and Film, and helped aid in the new LGBTQ Studies minor
at U of L. Dr. Story’s publications center around conceptions of embodiment, race,
gender, class, and sexualities.

"Precious Knowledge" film premiere Nov 9

Excerpted from Nov 8 Lexington Herald Leader:



The Martin Luther King, Jr. Cultural Center presents the local premiere of “Precious Knowledge” with Lexington resident and filmmaker Eren Isabel McGinnis at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, in the Worsham Theatre in the Student Center. McGinnis will take questions from the audience following the screening. Admission is free.

McGinnis’ documentary, “Precious Knowledge,” interweaves the stories of students in the Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School. The filmmakers spent an entire year in the classroom filming this innovative social justice curriculum, documenting the transformative impact on students who become engaged, informed and active in their communities. While 48 percent of Mexican-American students currently drop out of high school, Tucson High’s Mexican American Studies Program has become a national model of educational success, with 93 percent of enrolled students graduating from high school (average over five years) and 85 percent going on to attend college.


“Precious Knowledge” is particularly timely as anti-immigration legislation is being enacted, considered or debated in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Utah, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado and other states.

In addition to other legislation, Arizona lawmakers passed a bill giving unilateral power to the state school superintendent to abolish ethnic studies classes.  “Precious Knowledge” provides an insider’s perspective to the historic battle over civil rights as Tucson High students and teachers fight to save their classes as well as what they believe is the future of public education for the entire nation as the Latino demographic continues to grow.  “Precious Knowledge” dramatically illustrates what motivates high school teachers and students to form the front line of an epic civil rights battle.

This screening of “Precious Knowledge” is co-sponsored by the UK Martin Luther King, Jr. Cultural Center, the Kentucky Dream Coalition, and Bluegrass Community and Technical College's Office of Hispanic Outreach and Services. “Precious Knowledge” is a co-production of Dos Vatos Productions, the Independent Television Service (ITVS), Arizona Public Media, and Latino Public Broadcasting, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

McGinnis and co-producer Ari Luis Palos began working together in the tobacco fields of Kentucky during the production of “Tobacco Blues,” starring Kentucky native Harry Dean Stanton. While living in Oaxaca, México, they worked together to produce the soundtracks of their Global Voices and True Stories PBS series hit show “Beyond the Border.”  Developing their continued interest in documenting civil rights battles, the wellspring of activism in Arizona lured them to Tucson, where they currently reside.

For more information about the Lexington premiere of “Precious Knowledge” at the University of Kentucky, contact Clarice Bales at preciousknowledgefilm@gmail.com or (520) 971-9886.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Upcoming EndNote Workshops


From Brad Carrington, Education Library:

EndNote version X5 is available from UK Download and it's free for students and employees.  The version for Mac was just made available.  The EndNote software helps you to manage your references to articles, books, etc., and it helps to format your citations for your papers and annotated bibliographies.
Log in with your LinkBlue ID and PW.
 
I'm giving two EndNote workshops in TEB140.  Drop in if you can.  Bring your laptops and I can help with the EndNote set-up.  Please share this message with your students.
-- Monday Nov. 21 from 2:30-4
-- Thursday Dec. 1 from 2:30-4

History Course for Spring 2012


Tuesdays & Thursdays 3:30-4:45
HIS 510 – Medieval Law
An Adventure in the “deep history” of modern western legal thought!
This course explores the variety of legal systems operating in medieval Europe, and connects those legal systems to changing social, religious, cultural, and political contexts.  We consider the impact of the dissolution of the western Roman empire on the development of law, and study the survival of Roman forms of legal analysis after the fourth century.  We examine the law codes known as “barbarian” law; we also look at other emerging forms of secular law, from the municipal to the royal, with particular attention to the Continental “ius commune” and the English Common Law.  We study the formation of religious legislation, and consider the debates over the relative authority of different sources of legislation, such as Scripture, councils, popes, theologians, and academic jurists.  To see how the medieval legal environment was actually experienced, we read accounts of trials and other legal processes.  The course shows the extent to which modern legal thought is deeply indebted, in surprising ways, to the principles and constructs of a thousand years of legal experimentation and formation of long-standing traditions.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Knutson Defense


Nichole Knutson
Dissertation Defense
109 Dickey Hall (Faculty Lounge)
 2-4 on Wednesday, November 16th

APPLYING THE RASCH MODEL TO MEASURE AND COMPARE FIRST-GENERATION AND CONTINUING-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENTS ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY
           
Students who are the first in their families to attend college are less likely to earn a college degree as compared to their continuing-generation peers.  In efforts to increase college graduation rates for first-generation college students, support programs designed to assist first-generation college students are increasing in numbers.  These first-generation programs are relying on existing research to build effective curriculums. Even though an extensive body of literature exists in the fields of self-efficacy and first-generation college students, research investigating the self-efficacy of first-generation college students are extremely limited.  The research is further limited when examining academic self-efficacy and generational status.  The purpose of this study is to investigate if parental levels of education affect college students’ self-reported levels of academic self-efficacy.  The following research questions guided this study:  1) Do survey response hierarchies differ between first-generation college students and their continuing-generation counterparts on a scale that measures academic self-efficacy?, 2) Do levels of item endorsability vary based upon parental levels of education? and 3) Do the results produced from the college student survey support the existing literature on first-generation college students and academic-self-efficacy?  Quality control indicators were utilized to assess the soundness of the instrument and to ensure that the rating scale functioned appropriately.  Variable maps were used to compare and contrast student responses and item hierarchies.  Pairwise differential item functioning (DIF) was used to examine item endorsability based upon levels of parental education.  Results encourage practitioners to be mindful of the importance of data-informed decision making. 

** All are welcome to attend. If you have questions about attending, contact the dissertation chair, Kelly Bradley at kdbrad2@uky.edu

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Visiting Scholar


Next week,  Gochmyrat Gutlyyev, a CEC ArtsLink Fellow visiting Appalshop from Turkmenistan, will be visiting UK for a couple of days. He would like to meet with other writers, storytellers and bloggers while he is hosted by the Appalachian Center Thursday and Friday, Nov. 10 and 11. (He will be attending the Appalachian music concert on Friday, of course.) I am copying the CEC ArtsLink Fellows page for Gochmyrat here. Please email Ann Kingsolver at ann.kingsolver@uky.edu if you would like to meet him during his visit.

GOCHMYRAT GUTLYYEV, TURKMENISTAN
Host: Appalshop, Whitesburg, KY
Artist—Gutlyyev collects and performs Turkmen stories as a folktale narrator, writer and blogger. Living in a multinational town that borders Afghanistan, he also investigates the ethnographical aspects of interactions between people of different cultural backgrounds. In his conversational style, he has begun to chronicle stories of Turkmen life and culture in literary form as short stories and essays, and more recently a blog. He hopes to expand his writing into a book-length work and would like to participate in discussions, meetings, classes and other events with US folklorists, writers and bloggers.

Appalachian Studies Course Offering for Spring 2012


UK COURSES RELATED TO APPALACHIAN STUDIES, SPRING AND SUMMER 2012

SPRING 2012
Undergraduate

APP 200 Introduction to Appalachian Studies. Instructor:  Dwight Billings,  TA: Catherine Herdman. Meetings & Times: Lectures on MW 2:00-2:50 p.m. with various Friday discussion sections (see Course Catalog) This course is a multidisciplinary introduction to Appalachian culture, history, and society.  It will examine how and why the central and southern Appalachian Mountains came to be viewed as a distinct region, “Appalachia,” and it will examine Appalachia's place in American life.  We will encounter the region's rich traditions of music and literature; its rural social life including kinship and neighborhood institutions; coal mining history, community patterns, and labor struggles; gender; the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, and Eastern Europeans in Appalachia; inequality and poverty; community politics and grassroots struggles; and current environmental issues including mountaintop removal coal mining.

APP 300 Energy in Appalachia. Instructor: Jenrose Fitzgerald. Meets: TR. Time: 3:30-4:45 p.m. This course will critically examine diverse representations of Appalachia’s energy economy. Readings include a range of perspectives on the social, environmental, and economic implications of coal in the region, as well as on the potential of  renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other alternatives for diversifying the region’s energy portfolio in the 21st century.  A central focus of the course will be the development of skills to help  students critically analyze how energy issues in Appalachia are framed by differently positioned players, including journalists, scientists, engineers, social scientists, industry representatives, and environmental and social justice groups.  The first half of the course will examine a range of perspectives on the coal industry and its impacts on Appalachian communities, and the second half of the course will focus on strategies for shaping the region’s energy future. 

GWS 301-001 Crossroads of Gender, Class, and Race:  Trashy Literature. Instructor:  Carol Mason. Meets: TR. Time: 2:00-3:15 p.m. Have you ever been told, “Don’t read that trash”!?  Have you ever heard someone being called “white trash”?  This is a course that explores the cultural and political implications of such exclamations.  We will read literature by and about  people who are insensitively called white trash.  A term we usually take for granted as a mean derision, “white trash” will serve as an analytical category as we read fiction exploring what it means to be working-class, poor, and white in  twentieth-century America. We will contextualize the fiction in theories of class, gender, sex, and racialization, specifically the critical study of whiteness, and in regional history, including that of Appalachia. 

ANT 352:003 North American Cultures. Instructor: Mary Anglin. Meets: TR.      Time: 3:30-4:45 p.m. This course uses readings, films, and music to explore the plurality of peoples and cultures in North America—with particular attention to the US.  We will look at youth cultures as sites of creativity and resistance, examine perennial problems in social equality, consider the similarities and differences between urban and rural ways of life, and explore environmental concerns as an integral part of making and sustaining culture. The goals of the course include gaining appreciation for the common humanity and uniqueness of cultures in North America, gaining awareness of and sensitivity toward stereotypes and ethnocentrism, and understanding the distinctions between “race,” ethnicity, and racism. A number of the course readings are specifically Appalachia-focused.

APP 399 Appalachian Resource Sustainability Practicum. Instructor: Ann Kingsolver. Meets: Spring Break 2012. Sign up for one hour of APP 399 with Ann Kingsolver to enroll in this spring break service-learning course in Appalachian Kentucky. The entire course (1 credit hour, pass/fail) will be completed from March 11 to March 18 at the Robinson Forest facilities, which are part of UK’s Robinson Center for Appalachian Resource Sustainability (http://www2.ca.uky.edu/rcars/) near Jackson, Kentucky. Students will learn about the history and future of natural resource use in the region including forestry, mining, and agriculture, with hands-on opportunities to work in a community garden, learn water quality testing techniques, and plan and carry out a small land reclamation project with an organization of young people in Magoffin County working toward sustainable livelihoods in the region. There will be interdisciplinary faculty participation from UK as well as opportunities to learn from discussions and activities with community members.  Transportation, lodging, and meals will be available to the group as part of the course; each student’s individual share of the expenses for lodging and meals will be capped at no more than $200 for the week.

ENG 482 Appalachian Literature. Instructor: Erik Reece. Meets: TR. Time: 12:30-1:45 p.m. In this course, we will examine the very rich literature —fiction, nonfiction, poetry, film and music — that has come from the mountains of Appalachia. While the region of Appalachia stretches from Alabama to New York State, our emphasis will be on the literature of central Appalachia — mainly the work of writers from Kentucky and West Virginia.

Undergraduate/Graduate

A&S 500 Special Topics: Global Appalachia. Instructor: Ann Kingsolver. Meets: TR. Time: 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
In this course, we will examine the ways in which Appalachia has always had strong global connections, environmentally, economically, and culturally.  We will critique isolationist discourse that has masked the shared concerns of those in Appalachia with other global regions that have been viewed as low-wage labor pools for transnational extractive industries, for example, and that have also contributed to collective knowledge about sustainable resource use and social capital. Appalachia’s global dimensions will be examined both historically and comparatively via topics ranging from local production of global commodities to migration, identity, changing land ownership, and community analyses and responses to the many processes discussed as globalization. The readings will include books by bell hooks, Roger Moody, Vandana Shiva, Eve Weinbaum, and other authors; required work will be different for undergraduate and graduate students.

GEO 509 GIS Workshop.  Instructor: Matthew Wilson. Meets: TR. Time: 12:30-1:45 p.m. Geographic information technologies continue to drive the representation and management of complex as well as everyday spatial information.  As a result, increasing numbers of for-profit and non-profit organizations have recognized the need to transform their information into a spatial format.  The demand for collaborative and participatory skills in the use of these mapping tools has, of course, been furthered by this general trend.  Therefore, the goal for this course is that each student will become an independent and effective GIS user while developing their collaborative skills in the use of GIS for spatial analysis and representation.  To meet this goal, this course follows a participatory workshop model, drawing on Elwood (2009) -- an intensive, hands-on experience in which student teams use GIS in collaboration with community partners.  These partnerships will involve students in a full range of collaborative GIS: working with team members and project partners to identify project goals, acquiring and preparing spatial data for GIS analyses, communicating with clients to assess progress, managing spatial data, and producing necessary maps and analyses.  The lecture, reading, and seminar discussion components of the course will focus on topics important to collaborative development -- to be prepared to implement, manage, and apply in a variety of research and applications areas, and in multiple geographical and institutional contexts.

GWS 595-001:  The Rural Queer. Instructor: Carol Mason. Meets: TR. Time: 11-00 a.m.-12:15 p.m. This advanced course explores how lesbian and gay historians and queer theorists have recently been theorizing the so-called rural queer. In addition to reading histories and ethnographies of actually existing GLBTQ people in rural communities, we will examine key concepts, cultural assumptions, and analytical categories that have come under scrutiny in the midst of recent scholarly inquiry. Among these are visibility, coming out, metronormativity, queer mobility, homonormativity, tolerance, and a variety of antigay concepts such as the ex-gay, the gay agenda, and the homosexual-as-terrorist. Our goal in examining these concepts is to map the scholarly inquiry into the rural queer – why such an inquiry arose and how it intersects with academic studies of globalization, critical regionalism, racial formation, social movements, and political rhetoric. This course is not recommended as a first course in sexuality studies.
Graduate

MUS 702 Musicology Seminar: American Sacred Music Expression. Instructor: Ron Pen. Meets: W. Time: 3:30-6:00 p.m. Study and research in specific musicological problems. Music of the Appalachian region will be included in the content of the course, and student projects may be related to sacred music of Appalachia.  Prereq: Consent of instructor.

SOC 735 Seminar in Social Inequalities: Inequality in Appalachia. Instructor: Dwight Billings. Meets: T. Time: 7:00-9:30 p.m. This course is an elective in the Sociology Department’s program in Social Inequalities. While it is organized by a sociological framework, it is also intended to serve as a graduate level introduction to multidisciplinary scholarship in Appalachian Studies. We will examine a few “classic” and mostly recent studies to explore interpretive shifts, controversies, and debates in Appalachian Studies, especially as they relate to the study of race, class, and gender. Topics will include Appalachia’s discursive formation (its “discovery” in the late nineteenth century), the construction of “tradition,” controversies over the politics of culture, interpretations of the region’s social history and development, and other topics such as poverty, globalization, politics and activism, healthcare, religion, and the environment including mountaintop removal coal mining. A sub-theme will focus on the relationships between Appalachian Studies and other critical cultural studies including post-colonialism, subaltern studies, and the intersectionality of inequalities. Among the goals of the course will be to provide a context for the critical assessment of new works in Appalachian Studies as well as the space to begin work on a publishable or presentable paper in the field that might be submitted to for presentation at the Appalachian Studies annual conference or conferences in students’ home disciplines. In addition to works in sociology, we will read new contributions to Appalachian studies of inequality from Anthropology, English, Education, History, Geography, and Political Science.

SUMMER 2012

APP 200  Introduction to Appalachian Studies. Instructor: Catherine Herdman. Meets: On-line, First six weeks summer session. This course is a multidisciplinary introduction to Appalachian culture, history, and society.  It will examine how and why the central and southern Appalachian Mountains came to be viewed as a distinct region, “Appalachia,” and it will examine Appalachia's place in American life.  We will encounter the region's rich traditions of music and literature; its rural social life including kinship and neighborhood institutions; coal mining history, community patterns, and labor struggles; gender; the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, and Eastern Europeans in Appalachia; inequality and poverty; community politics and grassroots struggles; and current environmental issues including mountaintop removal coal mining.

SOC 235 Inequalities in Society. Instructor: Shaunna Scott. Meets: Online, TBD. Analysis of the social origins, development, and persistence of inequality in various societies. One of the five modules for this course focuses on Appalachia. Prereq: SOC 101 or RSO 102. (Same as AAS 235.)

 APP 300 Development in Appalachia. Instructor: Amanda Fickey. Meets: On Campus, Second six weeks summer session. The term “Appalachia” may be understood in multiple ways. While the term is often associated with various socio-economic and political meanings, it also refers to the remarkable physical geography of ancient mountains that created a diversity of distinctive ecologies. This course will focus on the dynamic interplay between these meanings, power, wealth, biodiversity and landscape in shaping the cultural, economic, political history, and geography of this region over the past 200 years. Major themes will revolve around local, state, and regional development policies and practices as well as the exploration of alternative economic and political spaces.


For more information, contact: Ann Kingsolver, Director, Appalachian Studies Program.    ann.kingsolver@uky.edu    859-257-4852
Appalachian Center
University of Kentucky
624 Maxwelton Court
Lexington, KY 40506-0347