Appalachian Center Events

Coffee Hour

The Appalachian Center invites you to our drop-in Coffee Hour, Thursday from 10-11 AM. We welcome students, faculty, staff, and community members for coffee and light refreshments. Come visit with others interested in the region and learn more about the work of the Appalachian Center and the Appalachian Studies Program. Coffee Hour is a space to exchange ideas for programs, initiatives, and events, discuss regional issues, and share research in a casual, collegial atmosphere.

Join us in person, or virtually via Zoom!

https://uky.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qdOCoqD4sG9RcJjcbb5TSt-t1bOBx75xb

 

 

 

Date:
Location:
624 Maxwelton Ct, Zoom

Green Dot Overview at the Appalachian Center

Join the UK Appalachian Center community for a training on violence prevention and bystander intervention. Violence continues to impact communities throughout the Appalachian region- come see how you can help be a part of the solution and help create a safer world. 

Participants must register here: https://uky.campuslabs.com/engage/event/8032420 Lunch will be provided. Non-UK participants can register by emailing Rikketta Franklin at Rikketta.Franklin@uky.edu with the subject line- April 18 App Center Training Registration.

 

GreenDot
 
Green Dot is a bystander intervention training program backed by research and used by colleges across the country. The Green Dot strategy educates and empowers students, staff and faculty to create a community where violence is not tolerated, and everyone plays a part in creating a culture of respect.
 
This event is presented by the UK VIP Center. 
 
Date:
-
Location:
Appalachian Center, 624 Maxwelton Ct.

Can Science-based Spirituality Save the Planet?

Dr. Sideris’s research focuses broadly on the ethical significance of natural processes, and the way in which “environmental” values are captured, or obscured, by narratives and perspectives from religion and the sciences. Her recent research examines the role of wonder in contemporary scientific discourse and its impact on how humans conceive of and relate to nature. She is especially interested in the mythic, religious, and ethical dimensions of the so-called Anthropocene and its attendant technologies, such as geoengineering and de-extinction. The overarching question that drives her research is how to articulate a vision of the human that is appropriate to the environmental challenges we collectively face. She is actively involved in a number of international research initiatives in the environmental humanities, and serves as President-Elect of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.  She is author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection, and Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World, and co-editor of a collection of interdisciplinary essays on the life and work of environmental pioneer Rachel Carson, titled Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge.

Date:
Location:
Zoom- please register at https://uky.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__nL0TaOfT26CY-rwtqjacA

Appalasia

Please join us for a virtual performance and Q&A featuring Appalasia. Appalasia was formed by Mimi Jong, Jeff Berman, and Sue Powers in Pittsburgh, PA. Together they have created an evocative and ambitious performance language for dulcimer, erhu, banjo, and vocals that combines the influence of their folk-roots with original composition and inspired improvisation.

This event is co-sponsored by the UK Appalachian Center & Appalachian Studies Program, the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, Passport to the World's Year of Cultures Without Borders, the Gaines Center for the Humanities, and the Office of China Initiatives. It is presented in association with the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

We'll have a virtual viewing session at the John Jacob Niles Gallery, April 1st, at 3:30PM, or you can tune in via Zoom: https://uky.zoom.us/j/83469552756

 

 

Date:
Location:
John Jacob Niles Gallery - Lucille Little Fine Arts Library, Zoom

45th ANNUAL APPALACHIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE

Students and scholars from the UK Appalachian Center & Appalachian Studies Program will present research and exhibit at the Appalachian Studies Association annual conference.

 

http://appalachianstudies.org/annualconference/

 

 

Date:
-
Location:
West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV

Writing Fiction on Appalachian Culture: A Conversation with Authors Lee Mandelo and Ashley Blooms

 
Join the Cooperative for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) for a
conversation between Lee Mandelo, author of the "queer southern gothic"
Summer Sons, and Ashley Blooms, author of recently-published Appalachian novel
Where I Can't Follow, about their work as Kentucky writers. Blooms and Mandelo
will discuss their journeys through publishing, how they approach Appalachian
cultures in their fiction, and how their novels engage with topics such as gender
and trauma within these contexts
Date:
-
Location:
Zoom

"Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown": Pastoral Return and African American Culture

"I asked the boy beneath the pines.

He said, “The Master’s gone alone

Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,

Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.”

—Chia Tao, “Searching for the Hermit in Vain”



I argue that the "return of a lost commons," to cite Jared Sexton's term, is insufficient to address the bondage of the modern world. Looking at the television show Queen Sugar and the novel We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge, I show that notions of land ownership and philosophical notions of the "self" under Western society fail to redress the wounds of slavery and land theft experienced by Native Americans and, by extension, after the Civil War, by African Americans. Instead, I build on abolitionist rejections of Western notions of the human as well as regimes of property in order to show that a method of non-ownership and no-self are articulated in Zen ideology. I align this alternative framework with the philosophies of Zen Buddhism, showing that the "life of homelessness" for the purpose of ego death, aligns with an abolitionist ethos. In doing so, I connect Afropessimism with Zen philosophy, in order to schematize methodologies of personal and collective liberation. In this talk, I will point to the maroon communities of the Caribbean as embodying an abolitionist ideology and reference the work of black Zen teacher Zenju Earthlyn Manuel in her forthcoming book The Shamanic Roots of Zen, connecting all of these epistemes in a framework that destabilizes capitalist progress narratives and suggests radical possibilities for imagining freedom beyond the hold. 

***

Stefanie K. Dunning is an Associate Professor of English at Miami University. She is a graduate of Spelman College and the University of California, Riverside, and a Ford Fellow. Her first book, Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same-Sex Desire, and Contemporary African American Culture, from Indiana University Press, was published in 2009. Her latest project, Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture from the University Press of Mississippi was published in April 2021. In addition to her published books, she has been published in African American Review, MELUS, Studies in the Fantastic, and other journals and anthologies. She also has a podcast, called Black to Nature: the podcast, available for listening on all major platforms.

Date:
-
Location:
John Jacob Niles Gallery, Lucille Little Fine Arts Library

Special Coffee Hour w. Dr. Aaron Thompson

The Department of Sociology and the UK Appalachian Center & Appalachian Studies Program are thrilled to host Dr. Aaron Thompson, graduate of the UK Department of Sociology and President of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Dr. Thompson will be giving a public lecture entitled "Making Higher Education Matter to Kentucky"  at the E. Britt Brockman, M.D. Senate Chamber, in the Gatton Student Center at 2:30 pm on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022.

Join us for a special Coffee Hour, with Dr. Thompson, at the Appalachian Center or via, Zoom

Register for the Zoom option here: https://uky.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pc-irqzksHNQM6IkzucjewuAuYCH2Y_hP 

 

 

 
 
Date:
Location:
624 Maxwelton Ct, virtual via Zoom

Dr. Robert D. Bullard - 17th Annual CCTS Spring Conference Keynote Address

Dr. Robert D. Bullard is a Distinguished Professor and Urban Planning and Environmental Policy Director, of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University.

The 17th Annual CCTS Spring Conference is held in conjunction with the College of Dentistry Research Day,  College of Nursing Scholarship Showcase, College of Public Health Research Day and the College of Health Sciences Research Day.

For more information and to register visit https://www.ccts.uky.edu/2022-spring-conference-climate-health

 

Date:
Location:
Gatton Student Center
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