Dear Colleagues,

Our communications team is excited to roll out a new system for submitting news, events, and other content to A&S internal and external channels, which includes the Monday Memo, the A&S homepage, our alumni newsletter, and the College's social media (currently Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter). That new system consists of a simple webform located here:

• https://louisville.edu/artsandsciences/news/a-s-story-form-for-submission

Many thanks to Stephanie Godward for pioneering this system and to Rae Stilwell for implementing it. Please bookmark the webform on your internet browser and begin using it to share with us all of your best content. This webform replaces the previous system of emailing your content to ascollege@louisville.edu (or to yours truly). We understand that it takes time to transition to new systems, however, and we will gladly continue to accept submissions through those prior methods while everyone is acclimating to the new webform. 

University-wide publications like UofL News, UofL Today, and UofL Magazine have their own submission systems, but submitting your stories to our A&S team via the new webform can help us evaluate them for possible pitches on your behalf to these university-wide outlets. Events should always be submitted at the earliest possible moment in your planning process to the UofL calendar at this new link: https://events.louisville.edu/event/create.  

Please follow the College's social media yourself and encourage your student, friends, and family to do so as well--especially those with prospective students, as gaining more student followers on social media and more A&S webpage traffic are top priorities for our team. You may have noticed the abundance of fantastic content that Stephanie is posting, typically three times per week on social media and at least one new story per week on the A&S homepage. Stephanie and Rae are truly transforming our media presence in so many meaningful ways!

Sincerely,

Julie Wrinn, Chief of Staff

Research Agenda

Above, left to right: Tyler Fleming, Professor of History and Pan-African Studies, Emma Posey, Pan-African Studies and Political Science double major, Yomi Ejikunle, PhD student in Pan-African Studies, and Angela Storey, Director of the Ann Braden Institute for Social Justice Research.

Uncovering Louisville's Anti-Apartheid History: A Journey Through Time

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director

The Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research is embarking on a profound exploration into Louisville's role in the global anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 1980s. This ambitious project, led by a passionate team of faculty and student researchers, seeks to illuminate the city’s significant yet often overlooked contributions to the fight against apartheid, particularly highlighting the UofL’s pioneering decision to divest from South Africa in 1985. The research will culminate in an exhibit at the Anne Braden Institute in the coming academic year.

Emma Posey, a rising UofL sophomore double majoring in Political Science and Pan-African Studies, discovered the project through a class taught by Tyler Fleming, Associate Professor of Pan-African Studies and History. Emma’s participation is funded through the Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP), an intensive 10-week research experience for undergraduates that provides them with a stipend of $3,500.  As an MLK scholar, she is deeply committed to social justice.

“It is important for me to keep social justice at the root of everything I do,” Posey said. “I think it is my personal responsibility, as someone who is here on a social-justice based scholarship, to draw attention to things that matter to research and to focus my time on things I am not as familiar with. Because I think for so long, I’ve been so committed to things that personally affect me. In high school I was focused on the Black Lives Matter movement because that impacted me and my family. I want to examine other issues – and I feel I need to educate myself and look at how students matter throughout social movements in history.”

ABI offers research opportunities to students from other universities as well. Norah Laughter, a junior at Yale University majoring in American Studies, is from Russellville, KY and a member of the research team this summer. Her studies focus on social movements in the latter half of the 20th century, and she plans to create a thesis focused on Kentucky. Read more.

Above: Taping of the radio show Galería Bohemia in Uruguay on April 15, 2024, to promote the anthology edited by Thomas Wayne Edison, Candombe: arte universal. Prof. Edison is seated 2nd from right, above.

The Fulbright Experience in Uruguay

Note: Thomas Wayne Edison, Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, was awarded a Faculty Fulbright in spring 2024 for research in Montevideo, Uruguay, focusing on literature and arts from the rich Candombe musical tradition that grew out of the Black community during Uruguay’s colonial period. Each year, the Fulbright US Scholar Program offers roughly 400 awards to US recipients to more than one hundred countries in support of research and teaching projects. 

by Thomas Wayne Edison

Candombe drumming originated within the nation’s enslaved West African population and their descendants during the colonial period in the 18^th century. Today Candombe has become a symbol of the nation’s identity. Candombe is presented at Las Llamadas, part of the nation’s annual Carnival celebration, which brings a flood of emotions and excitement.

At different periods of the nation’s history, members of the African-descended community rejected aspects of Candombe because of its connection with African identity. Candombe faded out around the 1870s as the upper-class Black community distanced itself from Candombe and favored European instruments being introduced into the culture. Further, many Black men were “recruited” to fight for the nation’s civil wars in the 1830s and 1840s, and there was a significant loss of Black men because they were placed on the front lines in battles. The Candombe tradition was revived by Italian and Spanish immigrants, who began making people aware of the Black traditions that took place in the past. They played in the drumming celebrations (Las comparsas) with their faces painted black and began to be known as Lubolos; after WWII, the Black community became established enough to again embrace Candombe, and the practice became an important part of the nation’s Carnival processions.

One of the highlights of my trip was meeting face to face with activist, drummer, and luthier Lobo Núñez. He is one of the leading voices of nation’s Black community that loves Candombe and feels that the musical tradition should always maintain its rich connection with the nation’s Black community.

I am currently working on a monograph detailing the history of Candombe in Uruguay, beginning with its appearance in the Colonial Period until modern day. It is vital that in our post–Brionna Taylor world, Americans become aware of the struggles and achievements of communities of African ancestry in other parts of the world. Learning about the history of Blacks in Uruguay helps us to put the struggle of individuals of African ancestry in a global context. Read more.

Below: Candombe: arte universal, a new anthology edited by Thomas Wayne Edison (Barker Publishing, June 2024)

Honors Leadership Transition

Honors students, with Honors Program Director Joy Hart (last row, far right), presented their scholarship at the 2023 National Collegiate Honors Council conference, November 8-11, in Chicago.

“Drive, Dedication, and Ingenuity”: Joy Hart Reflects on Ten Cohorts of Honors Students

By Julie Wrinn, Chief of Staff

Students in UofL’s Honors Program experience the best of many worlds: they inhabit a close-knit and supportive community of high achievers, who are exposed to an interdisciplinary, liberal arts education, with all the research and co-curricular opportunities of a large research university, while residing in a thriving metropolitan area. A coveted spot in the University Honors Program has been key to attracting many of UofL’s most outstanding students, and the person leading those recruiting efforts for the past decade has been Professor of Communication Joy Hart.

Directing the Honors Program’s myriad offerings is one of the College’s most impactful roles, and Prof. Hart has been a beloved figure on campus during her time at the helm. Today only about half of Honors students major in A&S, and Hart credits her predecessor, Chemistry Professor John Richardson, for his instrumental role in expanding Honors to a university-wide program that includes all undergraduate schools and colleges. 

Ensuring that the Honors Program is an inclusive program benefitting all students at UofL has been one of Hart's priorities, and many of its events and programs are available to UofL students who are not in the Honors Program. “I hope that we’ve retained the open, welcoming spirit that has always been a hallmark of Honors and expanded ways of engaging Honors students and simultaneously invited others to be part of Honors’ initiatives,” said Hart.

But the most rewarding part of being Honors Director has been working with the students. “I never cease to be impressed by the drive, dedication, and ingenuity of our students,” she said. “From students who receive prestigious awards to students who land admission to their most desired graduate or professional school, and from students who discover a new course or topic area that they love to students who have their first manuscript published, sharing in their excitement and celebrating their successes over the past decade has been wonderful.” Read more.

Recruitment

UofL is a presenting sponsor for WFPK's Waterfront Wednesdays, one of Louisville's biggest and best attended events with concerts drawing an average of 12,000 attendees to each of six shows held monthly from April through September. The College of Arts & Sciences served as a booth host on May 29 to promote A&S academic programs, hand out swag, and raise the profile of UofL by engaging passersby. Above, left to right, are Dean Dayna Touron, Association Dean for Undergraduate Education Regina Roebuck, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Cara Cashon. (Sadly, A&S's second host date of July 26 was rained out.)

Kudos

Comparative Humanities Professor Featured in New Documentary on the Poet Charles Reznikoff

Congratulations to Ranen Omer-Sherman, Professor of Comparative Humanities and the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies, for being featured in the new documentary film on the poet Charles Reznikoff, Living and Seeing Charles Reznikoff. Born in a Jewish ghetto in Brooklyn at the end of the 19th century, Reznikoff addressed the human experience in all its forms. His documentary poetry draws up a searing portrait of the United States, while his plain verse eschews lyricism and teases out threads of Jewish history and diasporic identity. Through the words of nine contemporary poets and scholars from the US and Latin America, archival material of Reznikoff’s New York, and extracts from his 1974 poetry reading at the Poetry Center, San Francisco, this film is an invitation to live and see with Charles Reznikoff. Available on Vimeo. 

Shraddha Patel awarded prestigious FAO Schwarz Fellowship

Kudos to Shraddha Patel (BA Sociology and Social Biology '24) on being named a recipient of the FAO Schwarz Fellowship, the first UofL student to receive this award. The FAO Schwartz Fellowship, a highly selective two-year initiative designed for recent college graduates, offers a unique opportunity to engage with high-impact nonprofits in major metropolitan areas. Patel will be working with Reading Partners, an organization in New York City dedicated to fostering childhood literacy.

During her two years as a Community Engagement Fellow, Patel will provide one-on-one tutoring and complete a special project focused on volunteer recruitment. The work will be similar to an experience she had her first year at UofL volunteering with Decode Louisville, a non-profit dedicated to early literacy interventions. “It’s funny how things work out," said Patel.  "At the time, doing that, I didn’t know where it was going to lead me, and now I will be doing very similar work in the next two years.”

“I’m very thankful for not only my professors, of course, who made their classes impactful but also for the Honors Program that provided me the opportunity to live with and be surrounded by people that have similar interests,” Patel said. Read more. 

Sam Satterly (above) investigated a hazardous waste dump known as the “Gully of the Drums” in Jefferson Memorial Forest, a Louisville public park, for her MA in Sustainability.

Sustainability Graduate Student Exposes a Comedy of Errors by Federal, State, and Local Agencies Allowing Hazardous Wastes to Pollute Jefferson Memorial Forest

Sam Satterly (MA in Sustainability, 2023) identified 40 to 45 hazardous waste barrels in Jefferson Memorial Forest, a public park preserved as a tribute to veterans, that are leeching toxic contents into the soil and possibly a nearby waterway. Satterly uncovered previously untold connections between what is now referred to as the “Gully of the Drums” and the much larger and nationally infamous “Valley of the Drums,” located several hundred feet away before it was cleaned up in the 1980s.

Satterly, a 35-year-old Iraq War veteran, published her findings in a website, The Gully of the Drums: A cumulative investigation into the untold history of the Valley of the Drums EPA Superfund Site. In response, environmental consultants will be digging trenches and taking soil samples this summer to document new evidence of toxic waste dumped there decades ago. Satterly’s research uncovered a 2016 letter from state officials to the Michigan chemical company Dow Corning, telling the company they had found containers with its logo. The letter declared that the site was an “imminent threat to human health and the environment,” and told Dow Corning it needed to clean up the dump site.

Satterly's work was reported in Inside Climate News on April 3, 2024, and is now the subject of a Louisville Courier-Journal story dated July 1, 2024, "Louisville finally takes stock of abandoned waste dump inside Jefferson Memorial Forest."

English Professor Publishes New Book on Pandemic Disruptions for Students

Congratulations to Bronwyn Williams, Professor of English and Endowed Chair in Rhetoric and Composition, on the publication of his book, Literacies in Times of Disruption: Living and Learning During a Pandemic (Routledge, June 2024; see cover above). The wide-ranging disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic altered the experiences of place, technology, time, and school for students. This book explores how students’ responses to these extraordinary times shaped their identities as learners and writers, as well as their perceptions of education.

The 2025 recipient of the Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research from the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age, Williams’s book traces the voices of a diverse group of university students, from freshmen to doctoral students, over the first two years of the pandemic. Students discussed the effects of having their homes forced to serve as classrooms, work, and living spaces, as they also navigated much of school and life through their digital screens.

"When educators years from now seek to understand the meaning of the pandemic for university students’ learning and literacy practices, Literacies in Times of Disruption will be an indispensable touchstone. In interviews with students that are revealing, surprising, and often moving, Williams documents students’ uncertainties and loneliness in the early days of the pandemic, but also their creativity and resolve as they reimagined their relationships to place, technology, school, and their teachers. Bronwyn Williams offers in this book a wise, scholarly, deeply empathetic meditation on what disruptions of the recent past may tell us about how students learn and practice literacy in the future."  —John Duffy, Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

Alumni Profile

Savannah Barrett '08, Co-Founder of the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange

By Natalie Tracy, originally published in spring 2024 issue of UofL Magazine

“When we look for common ground, we find it,” asserts Savannah Barrett (Humanities ’08). She would know. Her roots in Grayson County, Kentucky, span generations, and though Barrett now resides in Louisville, she remains steadfast in her commitment to rural communities, for which she was recently featured in the New York Times and praised by former U.S. president Barack Obama.

Barrett co-founded the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange (RUX), a partnership between Art of the Rural and Appalshop aiming to connect people from all over the state to drive conversations and new connections. “RUX began from a simple belief – that if Kentuckians from different regions and backgrounds could just meet each other and share a meaningful experience, they’d find more in common than in contrast,” Barrett said. 

The RUX leadership program adopts an inclusive approach, beginning with an open application process reviewed by RUX alumni. Once selected, a cohort of 50-75 Kentuckians travels to three separate exchange conferences across the state each year for two years. During RUX “community intensives,” participants explore Kentucky, engage in significant conversations and build productive relationships bridging cultures, sectors and geographies. Since its inception in 2014, RUX has hosted eight cohorts, including 275 Kentuckians representing 60 (half of the state’s) counties.

Barrett credits her UofL education for developing her lifelong practices of curiosity, debate and deep listening. Looking ahead, Barrett aspires to create more platforms like RUX, enabling individuals to share stories and forge connections across party lines and differences. “I’ve learned that the place and people I come from are my greatest strengths. Working to honor them is my greatest opportunity,” Barrett said. Read more. 

Call for Submissions

Call for Papers: LCLC52

The 52nd Annual Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture will take place on Feb. 17-18 (virtual) and Feb. 20-22 (in-person) with a thrilling new line-up of nationally and internationally renowned keynote speakers: Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, Jahan Ramazani, and Jorge Medina!

LCLC52 welcomes critical papers and full panel discussions about literature from the 20th and 21st centuries and its connections to other art forms and academic fields. The conference also welcomes creative submissions, such as literary compositions, videos, or hybrid genres. Additionally, critical-creative submissions exploring poetics, crafts, or writing practices are welcomed.

Submissions are accepted in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hebrew, and Italian. Panels involving global literature and culture in other languages are encouraged. We also encourage proposals that bring together people from different universities or organizations, with varying levels of experience in academia, and from various fields of study.

Deadline for submissions is 11:59 P.M. EST on September 16, 2024. Read more for submission guidelines or contact Emily Ravenscraft, Conference Coordinator, at lclc@louisville.edu to learn how you can be a part of LCLC52.

A&S Events

Origin Stories: Peruvian Pre-Columbian Ceramics Exhibition

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is pleased to present Origin Stories, an exhibition of Peruvian pre-Columbian work from the archives of the Speed Art Museum curated by Dani Deeley. On view for the first time in nearly forty years, the objects in this exhibition provoke questions about the acquisition of objects, the circumstances of their arrival, and their current condition.

The collection of Peruvian art was donated by Elizabeth Crow Bullitt, of the well-known Bullitt family in Louisville, on behalf of her late husband, Charles William Buck in 1934. Buck acquired these objects during his time as U.S. ambassador to Peru from 1885 to 1889. Origin Stories presents a window into the lives of five Peruvian pre-Columbian ceramic objects that, up until 2024, had never been fully investigated. This exhibition will be on view from July 13 through August 9 at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts. The opening reception will be on July 13, from 4pm-7pm. 

UofL Events

Teaching Onboarding at UofL

The Delphi Center’s Teaching Onboarding experience serves as a base camp for all who are newer to teaching at UofL. We offer a series of foundational teaching and learning resources, tools and strategies that are easily accessible online. There are two ways to engage: in a semester-long online course with a cohort of colleagues or via self-paced modules you can find on our website. Registration for the Fall 2024 course is now open. Learn more online.

Instructors’ Fall Courses in Blackboard Ultra

UofL’s Blackboard team is excited to announce all fall 2024 course shells have been created in Blackboard Ultra. Don't wait; prepare yourself now to ensure a smooth transition. Delphi recommends attending a virtual training first to learn the basics, and then a pop-in session this week for personalized support. It’s essential for even users familiar with Blackboard Original to attend Ultra training due to significant user experience and feature differences.