Governor Jon Huntsman of Utah, the former US Ambassador to China, will deliver a lecture at UK on Thursday, February 20th, 2014, at 7:30 pm in Memorial Hall. This lecture will address the possibilities and challenges represented by the current US relationship with China. A Q&A period will follow the lecture. Please encourage your students to attend if the topic is relevant to your courses or the workplace for which we are preparing our students.

 

The lecture will be free of charge, and is sponsored by the Office of the President, UK International Center, and the UK Confucius Institute. The lecture title and complete information will be forthcoming in January.

J.R.R. Tolkien, wildly popular for his authorship of the fantasy trilogy, "The Lord of the Rings", was actually by profession an unprepossessing Medievalist and historical linguist. His extensive knowledge of world languages both ancient and modern lent itself to his creation of the artificial languages that add so much realistic depth to his fictional writing. This presentation describes the languages Tolkien created for his Middle Earth by revealing their connection with the actual spoken languages he studied during his academic career. Explore the ingenious sound symbolism and etymological connotations employed by this master storyteller - and learn a great many things about the real languages of Eurasia along

the way.