2 A&S students selected to speak at December Commencement
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 15, 2022) — University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto has selected two student representatives to speak at the UK December Commencement Ceremonies this Friday, Dec. 16, at Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center.
The two student speakers are Alyssa Hargis and Princess Valencia.
Phillis Wheatley at 250: The Pasts and Futures of Reading and Writing #BlackJoy
This Distinguished Panel considers the legacy of Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to publish in the United States. Celebrating the 250 year anniversary of Wheatley’s Poems, Dr. Tara Bynum (Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America), Dr. Brigitte Fielder (Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America), and Dr. Cassander Smith (Black Africans in the British Imagination: English Narratives of the Early Atlantic) also explore what her history means for the future of African American and American studies. This exciting Black History month event is sponsored by the Department of English, the College of Arts & Sciences Office for Inclusive Excellence, the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies, the Center for Graduate and Professional Diversity Initiatives, the African American and Africana Studies Program, and the Department of History.
“Phillis Wheatley’s Image and the Creative Black Child”
Dr. Brigitte Nicole Fielder
"Race, Respectability, and Wheatley in Our Present Age"
Dr. Cassander L. Smith
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Dr. Tara Bynum is an Assistant Professor of English & African American Studies and a scholar of early African American literary histories before 1800. She received her PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Barnard College.
Her current monograph, Reading Pleasures (University of Illinois Press’ New Black Studies, fall 2022), examines the ways in which eighteenth-century enslaved and/or free men and women feel good or experience pleasure in spite of the privations of slavery, “unfreedom,” or white supremacy. It is a pleasure that isn’t beholden to social expectations or systemic oppression, but instead is experienced because of an individual’s commitment to religious faith, friendship, or community building. This work is part of a larger, ongoing project that thinks more deeply about how black communities in the early republic made and shaped the very meaning of nation-building in the greater New England area and beyond. Related essays have appeared or are forthcoming in: Early American Literature, Common-Place, Legacy, J19, Criticism, American Periodicals, and African American Literature in Transition, Vol. 1, 1750-1800. |
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Dr. Brigitte Nicole Fielder is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches courses in African American literature, gender, race, childhood studies, and children's literature. She is the author of Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America (Duke UP, 2020), coeditor of Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), coeditor of J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and a founder of a Black digital humanities project working to recover Alice Dunbar-Nelson's stories about childhood for readers of all ages. Her current research includes a book on racialized human-animal relationships in the long nineteenth century, which shows how childhood becomes a key site for both humanization and racialization, and a new project on "old tech" and early iterations of Afrofuturist futuring. |
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Dr. Cassander L. Smith is the Associate Dean for academic affairs in the Honors College and an Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama. Smith’s teaching and research focus on representations of Black Africans in early Atlantic literature. She is the author of Black Africans in the British Imagination: English Narratives of the Early Atlantic (LSU Press, 2016) and Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic (forthcoming LSU Press, September 2023). She also is the co-editor of several edited volumes, including The Earliest African American Literatures: A Critical Reader, (UNC Press, 2021). |
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Grand Courtroom, Rosenberg College of Law
Thanks to UK Help, Graduate Student Clears Hurdles to a Doctorate in Mathematics
By Richard LeComte
LEXINGTON, KY. — On his college track team, Daniel Plaugher faced a lot of hurdles — mainly because he was a hurdler. When he started graduate studies in mathematics at the University of Kentucky, he faced more hurdles, this time of the academic kind. He found that he needed to do a lot of work in abstract mathematics to catch up to the levels of knowledge the program demands.
Incubator Reading Series
Free and open to the public. Come hear undergrads, MFA students, and faculty read from their work! Akhira Mahal Clay Shields Jazmin Witherspoon Special guest faculty reader: Prof. Julia Johnson Limited open mic spots available! First come first serve!
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Esports Theatre - Cornerstone Garage
UK to award Virginia Bell, Nikky Finney with honorary degrees
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 13, 2022) — The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees has approved honorary degrees for two citizens who have distinguished themselves in their careers and community service. The recipients are Virginia Marsh Bell and Nikky Finney.
2023 Department of English Undergraduate Showcase
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Cat's Den Gatton Student Center
Organic Semiconductor Thin Films: Crystal Growth and Interactions With Halide Perovskites
Abstract: In this seminar, we will focus on our recent work on two different thin film systems – metal halide perovskites and organic semiconductors.For one, through proper control of processing, we are able to realize pinhole free organic semiconductor films with single crystal grains with mm dimensions. We have found that transport in these films is considerably improved compared to disordered films, and that organic solar cells incorporating these long-range-ordered films exhibit highly delocalized, and band-like charge transfer (CT) states, contributing to noticeably lower energy losses. We will discuss these aspects and our understanding to-date of which molecules are amenable to the formation of such films, and how to propagate their growth. Also, organic hole transport materials (HTMs) are ubiquitous in halide perovskite solar cells, but what is less well known is that shallow HTMs that facilitate hole extraction from the perovskite also enable halogen transport. We will present our understanding of this phenomenon, as well as impacts to devices with regard to Au diffusion.
Bio: Barry Rand earned a BE in electrical engineering from The Cooper Union in 2001. Then he received MA and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Princeton University, in 2003 and 2007, respectively. From 2007 to 2013, he was at imec in Leuven, Belgium, ultimately as a principal scientist, researching the understanding, optimization, and manufacturability of thin-film solar cells. Since 2013, he is in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, currently as a Professor. Prof. Rand’s research interests highlight the border between electrical engineering, materials science, chemistry, and applied physics, covering electronic and optoelectronic thin-films and devices. He has authored over 160 refereed journal publications, has 25 issued US patents, and has received the 3M Nontenured Faculty Award (2014), DuPont Young Professor Award (2015), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2015), and ONR Young Investigator Program Award (2016).
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CP 114
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Chemistry Graduation Celebration
The Department of Chemistry hosts an annual Graduation Celebration and Awards Ceremony to recognize the outstanding achievements of our students on an annual basis.
For a list of recipients and graduates, please refer to the 2023 Graduation Celebration Program.
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WT Young Library Auditorium
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