The Appalachian Book Club (ABC) centered on Appalachia-based and/or Appalachian-written novels will meet to discuss Trashlands by Alison Stine. Below is the full schedule of book discussion dates for Trashlands:

February 19
March 4
March 18
April 1

Please refer to this helpful Google sheet for which pages we will be reading for each book discussion meeting. 

We will meet in the Appalachian Center Annex Conference Room (641 S. Limestone; entrance is in the back by the gravel lot beside the Appalachian Center) and via Zoom . Please email Shelby Roberts (shelbyroberts@uky.edu) if you have any questions!

The Appalachian Book Club centered on Appalachia-based and/ or Appalachian-written novels will be discussing Neema Avashia's 2022 memoir Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place. Please refer to this helpful Google sheet for which pages we will be reading for each book discussion meeting.

Book Club Dates for Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place:

January 22
February 5

We will meet in the Appalachian Center Annex Conference Room (641 S. Limestone; entrance is in the back by the gravel lot beside the Appalachian Center) and via Zoom . Please email Shelby Roberts (shelbyroberts@uky.edu) if you have any questions!

This reading group centered on Appalachia-based and/ or Appalachian-written novels resumes with Neema Avashia's 2022 memoir Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place. Please refer to this helpful Google sheet for which pages we will be reading for each book discussion meeting. If you can't make the January 22nd meeting, the next one will be on Monday, February 5th at the same time, and will be every other Monday from 7-8 pm the rest of the semester. We will meet in the Appalachian Center Annex Conference Room (641 S. Limestone; entrance is in the back by the gravel lot beside the Appalachian Center) and via Zoom . Please email Shelby Roberts (shelbyroberts@uky.edu) if you have any questions!

Join for us for a special end of year coffee hour!

Catered lunch event with Sylvia Ryerson at the Appalachian Center 624 Maxwelton Ct. 

This Department of Geography Spring Colloquia event is co-sponsored with the Appalachian Center/Appalachian Studies Program.

Join us for our SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) presentation at the Appalachian Center or tune in virtually via Zoom. This year's SWAPs will showcase the research conducted by recipients of the 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and the UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award, as well as other scholars and students sharing their research.

April 10 Presentations:

London Orzolek, 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, "Inclusion, Engagement, and Success: Appalachian Experiences in Higher Education"

Ryley Butler Modaff, 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, "The Impact of Stigma in Community Implementation of Medication Assisted Therapy (MAT)"

Register for the Zoom meeting here.

Be sure to check your spam for the Zoom link after registering.

Join us for our SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) presentation at the Appalachian Center or tune in virtually via Zoom. This year's SWAPs will showcase the research conducted by recipients of the 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and the UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award, as well as other scholars and students sharing their research.

April 3 Presentations:

Kopana Terry, 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, "Place, Identity, and Natural Disaster: The Storm That Changed a Town and Its People"

Mack Thompson, 2024 Symposium on Dis/Ability & Debility in Appalachia Coordinator, "Disabled, People, Disabled Places: Dialoguing toward Critical Appalachian Disability Studies"

Register for the Zoom meeting here.

Be sure to check your spam for the Zoom link after registering.

Join us for our SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) presentation at the Appalachian Center or tune in virtually via Zoom. This year's SWAPs will showcase the research conducted by recipients of the 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and the UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award, as well as other scholars and students sharing their research.

March 27 Presentations:

Jimmy Robinson, 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, "Taking the Rural with You: Rural Artists in the City"

Edward Lo, Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellow, "Supporting Indigenous Peoples and Their Role in a Sustainable Kentucky"

Register for the Zoom meeting here.

Be sure to check your spam for the Zoom link after registering.

Join us for our SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) presentation at the Appalachian Center or tune in virtually via Zoom. This year's SWAPs will showcase the research conducted by recipients of the 2023 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and the UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award, as well as other scholars and students sharing their research.

March 20 Presentations:

Trey Coburn, 2023 Eller and Billings Student Research Award, "The Future of Personalized Medicine: Improving Care in Appalachia and Beyond!"

Maddie Duff, 2023 Eller and Billings Student Research Award, "Chronic Conditions with Heart and Ears in Appalachia Research Study (cchears)"

Register for the Zoom meeting here.

Be sure to check your spam for the Zoom link after registering.

Join us for a public film screening and discussion of CALLS FROM HOME, a 2023 short film directed by Sylvia Ryerson, a Yale PhD student in American Studies. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Geography and the UK Appalachian Studies Program

A longstanding radio program sends familial messages of love to people incarcerated in Central Appalachia. Directed by Sylvia Ryerson, a former DJ for the show, CALLS FROM HOME follows the weekly broadcast through prison walls, portraying the many forms of distance that rural prison building creates—and the ceaseless work to end the racist system of mass incarceration and family separation.

Sylvia Ryerson (she/her) is a filmmaker, radio producer, organizer, and PhD student in American Studies at Yale University. Prior to graduate school, she worked at the documentary arts center Appalshop, in Whitesburg, Kentucky. There she served as a reporter and director of public affairs programming for Appalshop’s community radio station WMMT-FM and led the station's citizen journalism project. She also co-directed and hosted WMMT’s longstanding radio show Hip Hop from the Hilltop & Calls from Home broadcasting music and messages to people incarcerated in the region. She has co-produced numerous community-based participatory media projects working with movements for a just transition from fossil fuel extraction, the abolition of the prison industrial complex, and migrant justice. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Docs in Action Film Fund through Working Films to produce and direct her film CALLS FROM HOME, which won the Jack Spadaro Documentary Award for best nonfiction film or television presentation on Appalachia or its people from the Appalachian Studies Association. Her media & written work has appeared in the New York Times, American Quarterly, the Boston Review, NPR’s Here & Now and The Takeaway, the BBC, the Marshall Project, and other outlets. 

This screening also intends to build awareness around plans being pushed forward to build a new 1,408-person federal prison in Letcher County KY on a former mountain top removal site. On March 1 the Bureau of Prisons released their "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" which opens up a required 45-day public comment period. She is a founding member of the Racial Capitalism and the Carceral State (RCCS) Working Group at Yale, and of the Building Community Not Prisons (BCNP), a local and national coalition that is fighting to stop the construction of this prison and instead demanding investment in flood recovery, housing, education, and healthcare.

The film screening will be followed by a general Q & A along with a discussion with Sylvia and Dr. Lydia Pelot-Hobbs (UK Department of Geography) on mass incarceration in Central Appalachia.