By Francis Von Mann 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 29, 2025) - Janice W. Fernheimer, Ph.D., University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences professor, has been named a 2025-26 fellow of the Jewish Writers Institute Digital Storytellers Lab, a competitive program that supports and amplifies Jewish-themed creative projects. Digital Storytellers Lab fellows develop and produce untold and lesser-known Jewish stories or familiar stories retold in innovative ways and for new audiences. Fellows receive yearlong mentorship, funding and immersive educational experiences. 

By Lindsey Piercy 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 5, 2024) — Janice Fernheimer, Ph.D., professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, has received a 2024 Women of Whiskey Award, presented by the Bourbon Women Foundation.

Fernheimer, a professor in Jewish Studies and the Department of Writing, Rhetoric

In early 2021, the Nunn Center and Dr. Janice Fernheimer partnered to launch the Women in Bourbon Oral History Project. This oral history project, built in collaboration with students, documents women who have played important roles in Kentucky’s bourbon industry. Doug Boyd and Janice Fernheimer reflect on this phase of the oral history project and some key themes expressed in the interviews.  
 

By Janice W. Fernheimer, Karen Petrone and Jeff Polson 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 22, 2024) — The following op-ed was written by Janice W. Fernheimer, Karen Petrone and Jeff Polson. The opinions expressed are their own, not those of the University of Kentucky.

***

Antisemitism has been on the rise in Kentucky and across the U.S. since 2016, including a 36% increase nationally

By Lindsey Piercy 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 10, 2023) — Teachers across the Commonwealth have the opportunity to enhance K-12 Holocaust education through a University of Kentucky-led training initiative.

Educators can register for online and in-person Holocaust education workshops, offered from late January through early June of 2023.

Funded by a grant from the Jewish Heritage Fund, the UK-JHF Holocaust Education Initiative creates opportunities for interdisciplinary content sharing, pedagogical training and collaborative planning.

The program, 

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 31, 2022) — A new initiative led by Jewish Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky will provide educators from across the Commonwealth with the professional development and teaching tools necessary to enhance K-12 Holocaust education.

Funded by a grant from the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence, the UK-JHFE Holocaust Education Initiative will create opportunities for interdisciplinary content sharing, pedagogical training and collaborative planning.

The program aims to empower Kentucky teachers to meet the challenges of

By Jesi Jones-Bowman

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 11, 2022) — Ten undergraduate researchers from the University of Kentucky have been chosen to present their research at the 2022 Posters-at-the-Capitol event on March 3 at the Kentucky state Capitol in Frankfort. Now in its 20th year, this event will have more than 100 student representatives from across the state displaying the results of their research and scholarly or creative work. Among them are three students connected to the College of Arts & Sciences. 

Posters-at-the-Capitol is an event hosted collaboratively by Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky Community and Technical College System, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, University of Kentucky,

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Sheila Jelen, Zantker professor in Jewish Literature, Culture and History in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts & Sciences, was recognized as a finalist in the Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards for her work Salvage Poetics: Post-Holocaust American Jewish Folk Ethnographies. The book was a finalist in the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics.  

Salvage Poetics explores how American Jewish post-Holocaust writers, scholars and editors adapted pre-Holocaust Yiddish fiction and documentary photography for popular consumption by American

By Richard LeComte 

LEXINGTON, Ky. – If you’ve never heard of the bands the Sunmates, Frigidkitty, Whalerus, Cindy or Please Save My Earth, don’t worry – Rae Bandy has you covered. From inside the studios in WRFL in the University of Kentucky’s Gatton Student Center, Bandy is giving attention to these and other bands as the station’s local music director.  

“I actually have a few different shows on WRFL right now,” said Bandy, a senior History major

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 29, 2021) — In an effort to foster productive dialogue about antisemitism, the University of Kentucky’s Fraternity and Sorority Life, the Kentucky Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Kentucky Hillel hosted an educational event on Tuesday.

The presentation titled, “Antisemitism Past and Present,” was led by led by Jason Horowitz, director of Heritage Education and Partnership at Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) — a historically Jewish fraternity.

ZBT was founded in 1898 at the City College of New York. During that time, Jewish people

Among its many other impacts, COVID-19 has disrupted opportunities for University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences faculty to teach abroad.

In previous years, A&S faculty have taught short courses in China through partnerships facilitated by UK's Confucius Institute. For example, Rita Basuray, senior academic coordinator in A&S, has taught courses at Jilin University in Changchun, China, for six summers. Unfortunately, she was interrupted in 2020 by the pandemic.

She said she kept going back to Jilin because of her many positive experiences and her connections with the faculty and students. 

"Early on, it became obvious that it wasn’t just teaching, but exchanging active teaching ideas, fostering relationships over dinner or outings, and much more," Basuray said. "Not only did I develop long-term relations with teachers, but with

By Richard LeComte

Austin Coke, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences from Louisville, Kentucky, is a Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Scholar for fall 2020.

The Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Scholarship aims to encourage and support Jewish Studies on the University of Kentucky campus. Students selected to become JHFE scholars commit to completing a minor in Jewish Studies in a maximum of four years.

As part of the JHFE scholar experience, students participate in an original scholarly research project under the guidance of a Jewish Studies faculty mentor. The scholarship provides $4,000 a year

By Richard LeComte

Janice Fernheimer has been interested in archives, since she first set foot in one as an undergraduate English major at the University of Maryland. Her current projects build archives that highlight the influence of minorities in Kentucky’s history.

For her contributions to the archival profession, she has received the Midwest Archives Conference President’s Award for 2020.

“I am very honored that the interdisciplinary, highly collaborative work of building the oral history project has been recognized for its significant contributions to pedagogic innovation, archive building and stewarding,  and community engagement,” said Fernheimer, Zantker Professor and director of the Jewish Studies Program in UK’s College of

By Lindsey Piercy 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 23 2020) — It’s a 25,000-piece puzzle that researchers have longed to solve. That’s because the 25,000 fragments represent the Dead Sea Scrolls, and inside are ancient secrets — mysteries that have been locked away for 2,000 years.

For more than two decades, Brent Seales has doggedly labored to help solve the puzzle.

Seales, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky, is considered the foremost expert in the digital restoration of damaged and unreadable manuscripts. To this day, his quest to uncover the wisdom of the ancients is ever evolving.

By Addison Cave

LEXINGTON, KY. (June 22) -- Sheila Jelen, interim director of the program in Jewish Studies and associate professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures in the College of Arts & Sciences at University of Kentucky, was recently awarded the Zantker Charitable Foundation Professorship in History.

Jelen has published a variety of monographs and edited volumes including, most recently, Salvage Poetics: Post-Holocaust American Jewish Folk Ethnographies (2020) and Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades (2017). Her work has appeared in such journals as Prooftexts, The Jewish Quarterly Review, The AJS Review, Religion and Literature, Comparative Literature Studies and Hebrew Studies.

By Lori Adams

The University of Kentucky has released its Dean's List for the spring 2019 semester. A total of 6,562 students were recognized for their outstanding academic performance. 

To make a Dean’s List in one of the UK colleges, a student must earn a grade-point average of 3.6 or higher and must have earned 12 credits or more in that semester, excluding credits earned in pass-fail classes. Some UK colleges require a 3.5 GPA to make the Dean’s List.

The full Dean's List can be accessed by visiting: www.uky.edu/PR/News/DeansList/.

The University of Kentucky is increasingly the first choice for students, faculty and staff to pursue their passions and their professional goals. In the last two years, Forbes has named UK among the best employers for diversity and

By Whitney Hale

Emily Hedges (far left) and  Hannah Thompson (far right) were joined by faculty sponsor Miriam Kienle, Interim Dean of UK Libraries Deirdre Scaggs and faculty sponsor Janice Fernheimer. Mark Cornelison l UK Photo.

Last night, University of Kentucky Libraries awarded the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship to art history and visual studies senior Emily Hedges and biology and Lewis Honors College junior Hannah Thompson at the UK Libraries Spring Gala. The awards recognize exceptional, original scholarship and excellent research conducted by UK undergraduates making substantive and

By Whitney Hale, Ellie Wnek and Hannah Edelen

Senior Dealla Samadi discovered a missing piece of the book "La Reine Albemarle," which was published posthumously without the segment. Her discovery has led to an article published in a French philosophy journal.

Seven interns in the University of Kentucky Libraries' Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) Learning Lab will represent UK at the second World Conference of Undergraduate Research (World CUR).

These students will travel to Oldenburg, Germany, May 23-25, to present their research, discuss global issues and create an international research partnership. Funding for their travel is provided through the 

By Nate Harling

President Eli Capilouto and Dr. Mary Lynne Capilouto with members of the Rosenzweig family. The family says President Capilouto’s commitment to the cultivation of a strong, supportive Jewish community attracted them to UK.

Alex Rosenzweig grew up in Long Island, New York, some 750 miles away from Lexington, with no links to the Bluegrass State. Now, in his final year pursuing a degree in engineering and a minor in Jewish studies at the University of Kentucky, he says he is part of a “Big Blue family.”

While he began his first year alone in a new place, he is now in his senior year as part of a strong network of friends, including two siblings and two cousins. How five relatives from Long Island ended up going to UK together is a long and complicated story, but it starts and ends with community.

“We are a community driven