By Jenny Wells-Hosley

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center and Center for Service-Learning and Civic Engagment are set to launch an internship program, AppalachiaCorps, this summer.

The two-four month internship program is designed to pair service-oriented, driven students with opportunities for experiential learning and research in Eastern Kentucky and the greater Appalachian region.

"We are excited to provide paid internship opportunities for students to be able to partner with community organizations in the Appalachian region," said Kathryn Engle, associate director of the Appalachian Center. "The AppalachiaCorps program

By University Press of Kentucky and Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 30, 2021) — The University Press of Kentucky is debuting its newest series, “Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices,” edited by Crystal Wilkinson, niversity of Kentucky faculty member and Kentucky's recently named Poet Laureate, alongside Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and Davis Shoulders.

This book series gives voice to Black, Native, Latinx, Asian, queer and other nonwhite or ignored identities within the Appalachian region.  

“This series reminds us that Appalachian literature is an ever-changing,

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 15, 2021) — To mark Women’s History Month, the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center and the UK Lewis Honors College will host a virtual screening and discussion on a film about writer and social justice advocate Lillian Smith.

“Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence” will be available to the UK community and the public to watch March 17-24 here: https://lilliansmithdoc.com/private-screening-kentucky.

In addition to the film, a Q&A session and discussion will take place 3-4:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 24, on Zoom, featuring the filmmaker Hal Jacobs

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 22, 2021) — The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center will showcase the work of student researchers through its Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress series this semester.

This series will feature presentations from graduate and undergraduate students covering topics ranging from poetry to cancer research to education to local foods. 

The presenting students are supported through the center’s James S. Brown Graduate Student Awards for Research on Appalachia and the UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Awards.

“We are excited to be able to help fund important

By Jessica Bowman-Jones

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 16, 2020) — Ten University of Kentucky undergraduate student finalists recently competed in the final round of the third 5-Minute Fast Track Research Oral Competition.

The competition included two virtual preliminary rounds, with the top 10 students advancing to the final championship competition. This year’s final round was hosted in the UK's Worsham Cinema and livestreamed to a virtual audience.

Cultivating students’ presentation and research communication skills, competitors were challenged to present their research in five minutes, using only one static slide, in front of a panel of three judges and a virtual audience.

The top three winners are:

Click here to read the full article.

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center is currently offering awards and funding opportunities for students involved with work and research in the Appalachian region.

Applications for the 2021 James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and applications for the 2021 UK Appalachian Center Eller & Billings Student Research Award are both due Feb. 15. 2021.

Graduate students are eligible to apply for the James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia and both undergraduate

By University Press of Kentucky and Danielle Donham

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 17, 2020) — When the Declaration of Independence was signed by a group of wealthy white men in 1776, poor white men, African Americans and women quickly discovered that the unalienable rights it promised were not truly for all. 

The 19th Amendment eventually gave women the right to vote in 1920, but the change was not welcomed by people of all genders in politically and religiously conservative Kentucky. As a result, the suffrage movement in the Commonwealth involved a tangled web of stakeholders, entrenched interest groups, unyielding constitutional barriers and activists with competing strategies.

In this new release from the

Click here to read the full article. 

-->

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 15, 2020) — The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center has a new resource available for students, faculty and community members seeking information on populations in Eastern Kentucky’s 54 counties.

“Eastern Kentucky: By the Numbers” offers a specialized set of county profiles from UK Cooperative Extension’s “Kentucky: By the Numbers" program. Compiled from 18 different sources, data for more than 60 variables are organized across 10 thematic areas, including:

"We are excited

Click here to read the full article. 

By Richard LeComte

On episode five of “Holler Back!,” Stacie Fugate and Michael Hamilton converse with Montgomery County High School senior Larah Helayne, a singer-songwriter whose activism for LGBTQ issues in Montgomery County, Kentucky, has brought her attention in Appalachia. During the podcast, Fugate talks to the teenager about her strong emotional reaction to hearing Helayne’s songs.

“I’m sitting in the audience and crying,” Fugate says. “It wasn’t just me; everybody around me is crying.”

That kind of emotional attachment to Appalachia and its people sparks the passion Fugate and Hamilton bring to “Holler Back!,” a podcast run by two Appalachian Studies minors in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky. The podcasts themselves are part of the programming of UK’s

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 27, 2020) — The University of Kentucky Appalachian Center has honored 12 students with its annual research awards. Nine graduate students received the James S. Brown Graduate Student Award for Research on Appalachia, and two graduate students and one undergraduate student received the center's Eller and Billings Student Research Award. 

“The Appalachian Center is thrilled to support these student researchers that represent nine departments across four colleges,” said Kathryn Engle, associate director of the Appalachian Center. “We look forward to learning from their work as they continue to produce cutting-edge research in and on the region.”

The James S. Brown Graduate Student

By Akhira Umar

University of Kentucky English professor Frank X Walker poses for a portrait in his office on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2020, at the Patterson office tower in Lexington, Kentucky. Photo by Michael Clubb | Staff

In 1991, South Carolina native Nikky Finney came to Lexington to perform at a poetry reading titled, “The Best of Southern Writing.”

Before Finney, who is black, was added to the list of performers, the event was called, “The Best of Appalachian Writing.”

Danville native Frank X Walker, a UK English professor and former Poet Laureate of Kentucky, was conflicted about the name change.

He wondered why this change was made and found that the definition of Appalachians at the time was, “white residents of the mountainous regions of Appalachia.”

Moved by this, he crafted a poem using the word “Affrilachian” for the

UK student is recognized with honors at the 2019 Student Support Services awards ceremony. Student Support Services is one of the Women & Philanthropy grant recipients. Pete Comparoni | UK Photo.

 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 10, 2020) — The Women & Philanthropy Network at the University of Kentucky recently awarded $227,250 to six academic initiatives at UK. This brings their lifetime grants to more than $2.2 million.

The Women & Philanthropy Network at UK was formed in 2007 to motivate and foster women as leaders, donors and advocates for UK. This group of women created a new culture of service and philanthropy through their gifts of time, talent and resources.

By Jenny Wells-Hosley

The Appalachian Studies Association conference, which was scheduled to take place this week at the University of Kentucky, has been canceled due to circumstances surrounding COVID-19. The following message was sent from the ASA to its members and registrants yesterday:

"We are writing to tell you that after much consideration and discussion we have determined that cancelling the ASA conference is the right thing to do in light of the circumstances with coronavirus. The Steering Committee has a lot of work to do to evaluate the consequences of this decision and we will be discussing this in the days ahead. We are grateful to the UK administration and especially the planning committee who have organized an amazing conference.

We are sorry that this had to happen, but we

Eastern Standard is a radio magazine of interviews and stories about interesting people, places and things happening in central and Appalachian Kentucky.

Dr. Kathy Newfont, an associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky, chairs the 43rd annual conference of the Appalachian Studies Association happening March 12-15 at UK.

-->Kathryn Newfont joins us for this week's episode of THINK HUMANITIES to tell us about the upcoming 43rd Appalachian Studies Conference taking place at the University of Kentucky. The conference theme is "Appalachian Understories: Growing Hope and Resilience from Commonwealth to Global Commons" and will be taking place March 12 - 15.

By Will Wright

McAfee Knob in Virginia, Mount Katahdin, Maine, and the Grayson Highlands of Virginia are three of the multiple landmarks Wright encountered along the Appalachian Trail.

The driveway that leads from Route 15 to Riverside Park in Whitesburg is easy to miss.

It peels off from the main road and leads down to a gravel parking lot cozied up along the bank of the North Fork Kentucky River.

On a Sunday afternoon last fall, Patty Amburgey stood here and thought about her husband.

His name is one of dozens etched on a black memorial stone erected in October to honor coal miners who worked in the surrounding mountains and died of black lung disease.

Like many other widows in Eastern Kentucky, Amburgey spent the last years of her husband’s life caring for him as the disease took its toll.

Crawford Lee

By Brianna Stanley

This year marks two firsts in the Appalachian Studies Association conference’s 43-year history — the first time it’s being held at UK and the first time it’s had a main focus on the forests of the region.

The theme of this year’s ASA conference, “Appalachian Understories: Growing Hope and Resilience from Commonwealth to Global Commons,” refers not only to the understory of the forest ecologically speaking, but also to the stories of beauty, cultural pride and growth in Appalachia that are so often overshadowed by derogatory stereotypes.

Isabel Jenkins

Within a forest context, an “understory” is the biodiverse plant, animal, and fungus life that exists below the tree canopy, often growing partially in shadow. It’s the overlooked nutrient-rich leaf litter, the mosses and acorns and soils, the seedlings striving