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

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

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: 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

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

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

by Saraya Brewer
photos by Lee Thomas

Leave it to a graduate student in film studies to hammer out aspects of horror from one of America’s most beloved family Christmas classics. “It’s Christmas film noir,” said Colleen Glenn about "It’s a Wonderful Life." “It’s an extremely dark film.” "It’s a Wonderful Life" is just one of the handful of Jimmy Stewart films that Glenn, a University of Kentucky English Ph.D. candidate with a specialty in film studies, has watched (and re-watched, analyzed, paused, rewound, and watched again) for her dissertation, in which Stewart and other great actors of the mid 20th century –– including Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne –– will each get their own chapter.

“I grew up watching old classic movies on PBS with my family, so I really have my parents to thank for my original interest in film,” Glenn said. “I

Linguistics Undergraduate Student

Jessica Holman

"The Place Where Language and People Cross"

by Jessica Fisher
photos by Shaun Ring

If you think that linguistics is just about learning a bunch of different languages then, frankly, you have been misinformed. But don’t take it to heart—most people share this common misconception. Luckily, one of UK’s finest linguistics students, Jessica Holman, is able to clarify what the major really entails and why she is so proud of her eastern Kentucky roots, accent and all.

Born in London, Ky., right in the foothills of Appalachia, Holman developed a love for language at an early age—her native Appalachian English, unique in its own right. After all there is Standard English, which Holman said, “we all need to learn so everyone can understand each other,” but which she also points

by Rebekah Tilley
photos by Richie Wireman

For many of us, our freshman year of college is the first transitional step into experiencing the world. As a freshly minted high school graduate, doctoral student Leah Bayens instead spent that first year in the woods reading.

“There is something about that experience that forged in me what was already a deep-seated understanding of the importance of those kinds of rural communities, the importance of not developing everything into suburban enclaves,” explained the Louisville native. “It was a foundational experience for me because of that. It was also my first real foray into understanding farm culture.”

Since that time Bayens has grafted herself into the land, the culture and the nature that surrounds it all. It permeates her graduate research, how she lives her life, and who she is at her core.

by Robin Roenker
photos by Mark Cornelison

What sets psychologist Gregory Smith’s work apart from others doing research on alcoholism and other addictive behaviors is his ambitious goal to “chart a pathway of cause from the beginning to the end,” he said.

With his graduate students, Smith has developed models to assess a person’s risk for developing addictive behaviors that encompass both personality trait theory and psychosocial learning theory.

The old debate of whether nature or nurture predominates in determining behavior is, Smith says, obsolete. Now it’s understood that what’s important is how the two interact.

It’s that interplay that fascinates Smith, director of UK’s Clinical Psychology Training Program

Nathan DeWall's research reveals that the active ingredient in over-the-counter painkillers may blunt social pain.

by Kami Rice
Photo by Lee Thomas

Nathan DeWall found his way to social psychology partly because of frugality. The accidental journey into this academic field began when DeWall almost didn’t go to college at all because he just wanted to play music. As the son of musicians, that wasn’t as far-fetched an idea as it would be in other families in his hometown of Hastings, Nebraska. In the end, though, he headed down the college path but chose St. Olaf College in Minnesota for their strong music program.

His introduction to psychology came, appropriately enough, in an Intro to Psychology class. He enjoyed the class and earned a decent grade in it. He had always liked people, after all, and it was fun to learn about how people work. Around

By Erin Holaday Photos by Shaun Ring After a busy day without a lunch break, how many times have you had that extra piece of chocolate cake, or another glass of wine later that night, when you knew, in your heart of hearts that you might not really need it? "And the next morning, you're beating yourself up about it," said UK psychology graduate student Holly Miller. "It happens to everyone." But according to a new study headed up by Miller, it's not necessarily your fault. "Without fuel, you can't inhibit the bad behavior," she explained. "It's physiology." * Read more about Miller's research in the Huffington Post * Listen to a Podcast about Miller's research on iTunes Miller was attending a colloquium at UK last fall, when a presentation by Florida State University social psychologist Roy Baumeister caught her attention. Baumeister's study involved glucose and self-control. Self-

Among the six University of Kentucky professors receiving the 2011 Great Teacher Award for their excellence in the classroom by the UK Alumni Association is Assistant Professor of Anthropology Erin Koch.

Watch the video highlighting all the honorees

Started in 1961, the Great Teacher Award is the oldest continuous award that recognizes teaching at UK. The nominations are made by students. Selection of the award recipients is made by the UK Alumni Association Great Teacher Award Committee, in cooperation with the student organization Omicron Delta Kappa. Great Teacher Award recipients each receive a citation, an engraved plaque, and a cash award.

Erin Koch Feature Story - Health Inequalities and the State

Erin Koch is an assistant professor of

by Rebekah Tilley
photos by Richie Wireman and Brett Fisher

In the 2004 Academy Award winning film "Born Into Brothels," the picture painted of Indian sex workers is overwhelmingly tragic. For decades, dedicated feminists and social activists have poured resources into rescuing Indian women from lives of prostitution. Yet as Gender and Women’s Studies assistant professor Lucinda Ramberg suggests in her recently completed manuscript, "Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion," efforts to “rescue” a particular subset of Indian sex workers called devadasis from prostitution has effectively undermined their economic and

Kentucky's Secret to Bourbon Production

http://envision.as.uky.edu/files/Audio/Bourbon/original.mp3

Bourbon is a Kentucky tradition and Alan Fryar, a UK hydrogeologist, explains the relationships between Kentucky limestone, ground water systems and bourbon.

by Stephanie Lang

On the evening news, it is not uncommon to see polls charting public opinion on a variety of topics. The number of polls tends to spike around presidential elections, especially with topics surrounding approval ratings, national issues, and the economy. The degree of voter anger, angst, or contentment prominently posted in the polls is often a barometer of the larger political climate. And as you can imagine, those polls and resulting nightly news conversations can spark heated, informative, and oddly entertaining debates on the state of national politics.

But what trends can be found in poll numbers gathered in an increasingly media-saturated world? How do these poll numbers and nightly news conversations, for example, impact the way voters respond in presidential elections and how do voters react to pressing issues such as the

Justin Wedeking's research shows following the norm can be detrimental to success in the Supreme Court  

By Rebekah Tilley
photos by Mark Cornelison

When it comes to complex legal issues before the U.S. Supreme Court, it’s all about how you look at it. And as Dr. Justin Wedeking discovered, a fresh approach usually results in a winning case.

In an article that will be published later this year in the prestigiousAmerican Journal of Political Science, the associate professor in the UK Department of Political Science found that when petitioners emphasized alternative ways of arguing about an

<p>A recent article released by the Associated Press and featured in the Lexington Herald-Leader highlights the work of Dr. Bill Jansen and the United States Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe. Dr. Jansen, an anthropology graduate and A&amp;S Hall of Fame inductee, is currently working as a senior American advisor in Africa to combat the AIDS epidemic. A growing problem in both Zimbabwe as well as South Africa, Jansen&rsquo;s group is part of a program funded by the United States which is promoting circumcision to reduce the number of new AIDS cases.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
Jansen&rsquo;s work is a prime example of the social responsibility we hope to instill in future A&amp;S graduates &ndash; both to their local communities and beyond &ndash; as they move forward in their own lives and careers. To read more about