With "Banned Books Week" celebrated last week and "Teen Read Week" coming up Oct.18-24, exploring the world through literature seems to always be in season. For professors at the University of Kentucky, books have impacted their lives and careers in surprising ways.

Professor Jan Fernheimer discusses her new project with J.T. Waldman on Kentucky Jewish life and the history of bourbon. Read in its entirety at HBI Research.

WRD faculty have been busy this summer.

In June, Jim Ridolfo participated in A&S' Passport to the World initiative and travelled to Jordan and Morocco for a faculty development seminar. 

Jenny Rice gave an invited talk at Bar Ilan University this June entitled "What Are the Digital Humanities and Why Should We Care?"

Jeff Rice gave an invited talk at Bar Ilan University this June entitled "Digital Outragicity."

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies from WRD on Vimeo.

Our age is an age of writing. Social media. Podcasts. Websites. Video. News. Stories. Analysis. Critique. Reports. Advertisements. Technical documentation. Writing is everywhere we look. 

WRD prepares you for a career in writing. Every industry includes writing. Every industry supports the writing of internal and external documents (memos, reports, technical documents, research studies, social media usage, website development). Every industry sponsors trade writing (magazines, journals, newsletters, other publications). 

Every spring the Committee on Social Theory offers the team-taught seminar—always with four professors. Previous course themes/names for the seminar have included “Law, Sex, and Family” “Autobiography,” and “Security.” But previous seminars may not have spoken so directly to the professors’ personal backgrounds as “Transnational Lives” does with this team of four.

As a graduate student Jim Ridolfo embarked on what he thought was a short-term research project that diverged from his dissertation work. This “secondary” project on Samaritan manuscripts has led to nationally-funded, award-winning research.