This past April, the University of Kentucky's Jewish Studies Program was lucky enough to host a lecture with renowned scholar and author Catherine Rottenberg. The talk, titled "The Making of an Icon: Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side," concluded a series of special events hosted over the past year by the Jewish Studies Program.

For nearly two decades, the Jewish Studies program has drawn students and faculty from all over UK to teach and learn about Jewish culture, language, history, and beyond. In this podcast, I spoke with up-and-coming Jewish Studies Director, Jan Fernheimer, about what’s in store for Fall 2013, including a visiting scholar from Israel, a film series, and opportunities to connect with communities within and beyond the Commonwealth. 

Most of us associate mapping with cartography, but that's not always the case.

Foreign languages are in a period of transition regarding requirements for graduation here at the University of Kentucky. French professor Sadia Zoubir-Shaw and French graduate student Amelia Stevens discuss the continuing importance of world languages in a regular curriculum, as well as the career possibilities that a second language opens up.

Gwendolyn Schaefer knew she wanted to study abroad in the Middle East, but the Arab Spring presented a potential threat to her personal security. Her first two choices were Egypt and Syria, but both were deep in the throes of political unrest. Eventually, she landed in Amman, Jordan through Education Abroad at UK with AMIDEAST.

In 2011, the Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures gained a new faculty member: Francis Bailey, the current director of the TESL MA program. It's a new degree program that will train graduate students to teach English as a second language.

Fall of 2012 was the perfect time to conduct a class about American electoral politics - so it was taken up as the topic for Currents, a class offered to incoming Freshmen. The course explores the 2012 election from a variety of academic perspectives - including, but not limited to, philosophy, economics, history, and, of course, political science. In this podcast, five Currents students shared their experiences with the class. 

When you hear the phrase “Crime and Punishment,” you may think of the famous novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – or, if you’re a student at the University of Kentucky, you may think about a unique course developed by Cynthia Ruder and Janet Stamatel. The course, titled “A&S 100-401: Crime and Punishment in Russia’s Realms,” 

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 this summer 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!