by Robin Roenker

photos by Jennifer Roberts



The University of Kentucky Philosophy Department welcomed four new faculty members in fall 2010: Tim Sundell, Stefan Bird-Pollan, Meg Wallace, and Natalie Nenadic.



Their interests within the field couldn’t be more diverse—ranging, respectively, from the philosophy of language and linguistics to ethics to contemporary metaphysics (i.e., the nature of reality) and the problem of sexual objectification of women in today’s society.



But while their concentrations differ, each shares a love of philosophy itself, a love, as Wallace puts it, of “turning an argument around in [your] head for a while” until you get at a truth, however large or small, that offers insight into our word, our lives, or ourselves.



At UK, they each feel they

By Rebekah Tilley

Imagine a famous artist painting a portrait of another artist, long dead, based only on the description of someone who knew the person in life. Then imagine scholars hundreds of years later, attempting to determine the accuracy of the likeness and the origins of the artistic techniques of the portrait.

Now imagine that instead of artists, they are philosophers: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In an attempt to work out some of the mysteries of these two philosophers and their relationship to each other, the UK Department of Philosophy, in conjunction with the North American Kant Society, hosted the third annual meeting of the Leibniz Society of North America on September 25-27.

Kant is

<p>Thanks to faculty, staff, alumni and students who helped to make the last week a grand success, from the Distinguished Scholar lecture, to the Hall of Fame ceremony, to our A&amp;S Homecoming festivities.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
Our South Africa Initiative was featured in an article in the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.kentucky.com/2010/10/24/1492155/connecting-south-africa-and-… Herald-Leader</a> on Sunday. The film series has a few more exciting installments to show, including speaker <a target="_blank" href="http://southafrica.as.uky.edu/Guests/EddieDaniels.aspx">Eddie Daniels</a

<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.as.uky.edu/news_events/events/Pages/HomecomingWeekend2010.as… weekend festivities</a> are on the horizon, and a variety of opportunities to show pride in A&amp;S and UK are coming up. </p>
<p>To begin, on Wednesday, October 20th, Distinguished Professor Ernie Yanarella will be giving a lecture. The following Friday, October 22nd, marks the annual Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, which celebrates the accomplishments of the A&amp;S family.</p>
<p>Finally, A&amp;S is hosting a Tailgate party before the kickoff against the Georgia Bulldogs. Join us for food, fun, and live music as we mark the midpoint of another productive semester.</p>

Craig McIntosh

Cadet Spotlight

Kicking Off a Career of Leadership

by Andrew Batista

Football Time in the Bluegrass never begins until Craig McIntosh feels that the moment is right. While he channels his adrenaline, 68,000 fans in Commonwealth Stadium pause with anticipation each Saturday as McIntosh, a walk-on student athlete and University of Kentucky Army ROTC cadet, kicks away a football and thus begins the Wildcats’ weekly gridiron battles.

“Kicking a football is much more of a mental challenge than a physical performance,” said McIntosh. “When you’re kicking off, you’ve got one shot, and it’s either hit or miss. It’s not like you can hustle on the next play to recuperate mistakes you might have made. Ultimately, in that moment it’s just you and the ball.”

McIntosh takes his exceptional focus and discipline,

<p>I&nbsp;had the honor of introducing the first installment of &quot;Have You Heard From Johannesburg,&quot;&nbsp;a seven-part documentary that is showing one installment a week during this semester.</p>
<p>The first installment was called &quot;Road to Resistance.&quot;&nbsp;To listen to my speech, <a target="_blank" href="http://southafrica.as.uky.edu/multimedia/podcasts/10-10-05/Kornbluh_Lec… here</a>.</p>

In the time away from her anthropological research, Susan Stonich engages in a familiar and common hobby – “I’m a weaver.”

“The creative part of my life is weaving and textile design, I’m very interested in that,” she said.

But the nature of weaving, interlacing different threads to create a larger, coherent fabric, is integral to understanding Stonich’s career as an anthropological researcher and political ecologist. “I really do research that tends to integrate all those previously diverse fields.”

At the core of both Stonich’s research and pedagogical approach is a belief in the value and necessity of interdisciplinary perspectives. “We have to do a better job from the undergraduate level to the graduate level to train our students to be truly interdisciplinary,” she explained. “Because of the kinds of problems that I look at in my work, an

by Rebekah Tilley 

Step into US Army Captain Joey Orr’s office and you can tell his blood runs True Blue. On the wall hangs a large University of Kentucky flag – blue with a large white “K” – that is visibly stained with Iraqi dirt.

“I was representing my school even while in combat,” Orr grinned, pulling out a model of the tank he commanded in Iraq to point out exactly where the flag flew.

After seven years on active duty and a combat tour in Iraq, Orr took up the post of Operations Officer for the UK Army ROTC program. It’s familiar territory for Orr as he himself graduated from the program in 2003.

Orr’s father made the military his career, as did both of his grandfathers. Was Orr’s decision to

University of Kentucky graduate, Col. James “Jim” Crider is currently serving as the G3 for the 3rd Infantry Division/Task Force Marne in Northern Iraq. In this, his third tour in Iraq, Col. Crider is planning, resourcing and synchronizing stability operations there. On September 1, 2010 he began primarily training, advising and assisting the Iraqi Security Forces. But his job includes dealing with other issues as well including regional relationships between the Arabs and the Kurds, securing the boarder, providing provincial reconstruction, and protecting American forces.



Currently nearing the end of his third tour, Col. Crider explains that each of his tours has been different. His first tour was with the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division during the initial invasion.

“I was able to witness much of the initial jubilation amongst the Iraqi

The soldiers of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) who are scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan by early March will have a University of Kentucky alum among those leading their mission.

Lieutenant Colonel James Becker, a battalion commander based at Fort Campbell, Ky., will have about 800 soldiers assigned to him as they make their way overseas for a year-long deployment. Becker’s unit will be in charge of ensuring all logistics and medical support is provided for brigade combat team soldiers located in Regional Command-East in Afghanistan.

Among their responsibilities will be organizing maintenance of equipment which includes radio systems, mine-resistant vehicles, and weapons, as well as medical facilities, and all the supply and transport operations for fuel, food and water in the area, according to Becker.

<p>There are going to be a lot of opportunities to foster international understanding this year. &quot;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.as.uky.edu/news_events/events/Pages/Kentucky%20South%20Afric… Africa &amp; Kentucky: Different Lands, Common Ground</a>,&quot; will provide the campus community as well as the general public with a closer look at the two societies&rsquo; rich histories and present-day conditions. The South Africa and Kentucky program covers topics across disciplines and formats: there will be a series of films shown, book reading groups, lectures and other presentations are slated for the&nbsp;2010-2011 academic year, in addition to a <a target="_blank" href

<p>I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.&nbsp; Arts &amp; Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with some new additions to the A&amp;S team.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Department of Philosophy.</p>
<p><strong>Professor Timothy Sundell<br />
</strong><br />
Timothy Sundell&nbsp;works primarily in the philosophy of language and linguistics.&nbsp; One recent area of focus has been the nature of &quot;verbal disagreement.&quot;&nbsp; Specifically, in what way should&nbsp;individuals distinguish between substantive disagreements and disagreements that

Graduate Student

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."

 

<p>I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.&nbsp; Arts &amp; Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with some new additions to the A&amp;S team.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology.</p>
<p><strong>Anthropology:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Kristin Monroe</strong></p>
<p>Monroe is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in Middle East studies and the production of social and spatial inequalities. She pursues a range of interests through her research and teaching including cultural geography, theories of power, and

PhD Student

by Rebekah Tilley

photos by Mark Cornelison

Any person involved in academic research knows there is no way to avoid the field of statistics. Somewhere along the way you have to have a working knowledge of it. Statistics touches everything.

It was this very aspect of the field that captivated Angela Schörgendorfer, now a fourth year doctoral student in the UK Department of Statistics. “I’m a math person. I like doing math that I know will be applied to something. That was what intrigued me about statistics. You can use it for medical research, any kind of social science, and just about anything.” 

Schörgendorfer experienced the wide-ranging application of the field as a statistical consultant to the UK College of Agriculture where she worked on over 100 projects during a two-year period. The

I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.  Arts & Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with these new additions to the A&S team.

 

Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics.

Ribhu Kaul (Physics)

The field of "condensed matter theory" is concerned with understanding the rich diversity of our material world from the most fundamental laws of physics, i.e. quantum mechanics.  More specifically, Ribhu’s research focuses on the consequences of quantum mechanics on systems of infinite particles. Many-body quantum physics forms the basis of our understanding of the properties of a growing number of

<p>I am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.&nbsp; Arts &amp; Sciences is fortunate to have 42 new faculty (professors and lecturers) joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with these new additions to the A&amp;S team.</p>
<p>Allow me to introduce these new faculty members in the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics.</p>
<p>Kathleen Ponto (Mathematics)</p>
<p>Every airport map has a &quot;you are here&quot; point. There is a theorem in topology that says this always must be the case. Kathleen Ponto studies what happens to these kinds of points when you consider more complicated spaces - more dimensions, more twists and turns. She is particularly interested in ways to describe how many &quot;you are here

<p>I&nbsp;am thrilled to welcome a high caliber class of new faculty to the College this fall.&nbsp; Arts &amp;&nbsp;Sciences is fortunate to have 25 new instructors joining us as the semester starts. Over the next few blogs, I hope to acquaint readers with these new additions to the A&amp;S team.</p>
<p>Allow me to introduce these two new faculty members in the Department of&nbsp;Hispanic Studies.</p>
<p><strong>Mariana Amato</strong><span> specializes in Latin American literary and intellectual history from the 19th century onward. Mariana has written articles on the works of Mansilla, Lugones, Bellatin, Pauls and Quiroga. She is working on a manuscript that explores figures of the animal and the flesh in Latin American fiction of the 20th century.</span></p>
<p><strong

Rebecca Greene knew one thing when she came to college from Elliott County in eastern Kentucky. She was going to leave her tiny hometown of Sandy Hook and become an astrophysicist. No doubt about it.

Both her parents were teachers, and she was reading at a very young age. Greene seemed far enough ahead of the other kids that she was “outcast and ostracized” from the start. “So, I was turned against my hometown in certain ways,” Greene said. “I thought I needed to get out of there – that it was suffocating and oppressive.”

After landing a Singletary Scholarship to UK, she signed up as a double major – in physics and linguistics. The linguistics part of the equation came from a paper she did in high school on the “science of language.” That idea – ‘the science of language’ – swirled in her

But to Rebecca Linares, the city and Latin America as a whole are not just exotic vacation destinations; they are tangible entities whose interests and culture are directly and firmly tied to the United States. And her work is aimed at showing how.

Linares left Louisville in 2006 bound for Midway College. After realizing that the school’s selection of courses would not satisfy her ambitious goals, she transferred to the University of Kentucky in 2007. Here, she tailored her plans into a Spanish and Latin American Studies/International Studies