University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Christine Smith is a graduate student in the Department of Geography. A recipient of a grant from the National Science Foundation, Smith has been spending months in Egypt learning Arabic and conducting research since 2010. During her trip in summer of 2011, she interviewed a variety of artists, including Ganzeer, an internationally-known street artist.

In this interview, Smith discusses her experiences as a geographer and language student, and shares her perspective on the revolutionary upheaval known as the Arab Spring of 2011. Smith's research will take her to Egypt again this year to conduct research on public space and how individuals cope with the threat of state violence.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

Written texts, YouTube videos, podcasts - these are all means of communicating ideas to others. Craig Crowder is a graduate student in the Department of English and teaches Composition & Communication classes, WRD 110 & 111. In this podcast, Crowder discusses ways to engage students via multimedia projects, and his research, which examines social movement rhetoric in a society that uses multiple modes of communication.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

Last November, to memoralize American Prisoners of War and Missing In Action, ROTC cadets ran 29 miles from UK's Barker Hall to Frankfort's Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We sat down with Air Force ROTC cadets Christopher Corley, Melissa Matthews, Erin Jewell, and Andrew Hoch, all of whom ran the entire 29 miles, to discuss their experience and what POW-MIA means to them.

This podcast was produced by Sam Burchett.

Shawn Cecil is an International Studies and English undergraduate student at UK. She studied abroad in Grenoble, France for the 2010-2011 academic year. In this interview, conducted by This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman and Jonathan Beam, Cecil talks about her experiences abroad and plans for the future.

Dripsinum is the name of a place that isn't on any modern map - but, according to recent research, should be on the maps of the ancient Roman Empire. Archaeologists George Crothers and Paolo Visona returned from Italy in the summer of 2012 with data that indicates the whereabouts of the lost Roman settlement, said to be half the size of Pompeii - and another, older site below that!

Though written about in antiquity by medieval scholars and even Pliny the Elder, the features of the ancient city have only recently come to light: with the assistance of magnetic and radar images taken by Crothers and his team. In this podcast, the features of the site are described by Visona and Crothers, as well as the historical and cultural significance of these discoveries.

The trip was sponsored by a Research Support Grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research, and supported by the City of Arzignano, Italy.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

In 2012, Arts & Sciences Dean Mark Kornbluh and history professor Kathi Kern are taught a class 'inside out' - by taking an issue (in this case, the 2012 presidential election) and building a course around it. The class, " Currents: America Through the Lens of the 2012 Election," gave an interdisciplinary look into how American democracy functions. The class focused on the non-partisan examination of how elections work, their function in media and society, and how elections have changed over time.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

Did you know that the Bluegrass used to be like the Bahamas? A few hundred million years ago, our region was a tropical seascape. Frank Ettensohn, a professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at UK, offered a geology tour of the region to share the details with Earth Day celebrants. The tour began at Cove Spring Park near Frankfort, Kentucky, and then went along the adjacent road to study the exposed rock faces and collect fossils. To see pictures from the tour, check out our photo feed here at A&S or check us out on Flickr.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.

John Kamm was a visiting scholar for the A&S Year of China initiative, and presented the talk, "US/China Relations in the Year of the Dragon." He is an American businessman and human rights activist, and has received a MacArthur fellowship for “designing and implementing an original approach to freeing prisoners of conscience in China.” In this podcast, Denise Ho, an assistant professor in the Department of History, interviews Kamm about the function of the Dui Hua Foundation and its work in a global context.

At UK, the Formation and Evolution of Galaxies Group is a team of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty, who use the University's Dell Cluster supercomputer to predict and simulate the galactic mechanics of the early universe.

In this podcast, we talk to Isaac Shlosman, the group's faculty lead, about an observational discovery made in the fall of 2011, what will replace the Hubble, and how dark matter forms the back-bone of the universe.

This podcast was produced by Stephen Gordinier.

James Cobb is the director of the Kentucky Geological Survey, which works closely with the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at the University of Kentucky. In this interview, Cobb describes the types of work geologists do across the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which includes mapping geologic hazards and mineral and water resources. Cobb also discusses some of the geologic formations that make our region unique, such as the New Madrid Fault.

This podcast was produced by Cheyenne Hohman.