Letterfromthe GAINES DIRECTOR GAINES DIRECTOR

His deft demonstration of the way the important themes of Romantic poets played out in Taylor Swifts songwriting provided a glimpse into the amazing talent he will bring to the classroom as a high school English teacher.

For the Lafayette Symposium, we partnered with the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS) to feature the Slavery In Central Kentucky Initiative led by associate professor in the University of Kentucky department of history, Dr. Vanessa Holden, who also taught in the junior seminar in 2019. The Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative uses both archival and digital humanities to document the history of Black and Indigenous people at the University of Kentucky and the region. In addition to a lecture from Dr. Amrita Meyers about her new book on Julia Chin, we also held a day-long symposium at the Lexington Public Library where scholars, librarians, students, and city workers discussed how this initiative is making place the history of slaver and freedom in the Bluegrass region. One of the projects featured was the Freedom on the Move historical database, which uses UK’s vast archives of Kentucky newspapers to document ads posted by slavers seeking the recovery of Black people who self-emancipated by running away. The Lafayette Symposium’s intent is to highlight humanities in the local community. We were joined by over 100 people who came to learn about how this Initiative is contributing to our understanding of life for both enslaved and free Black people in Fayette County, central Kentucky, and the nation.

The theme next year is Myths and Monsters. We are honored to have acclaimed writer George Saunders give the Bale Boone Lecture at the Kentucky Theater in the fall. We also have a highly impressive list of faculty members signed on to teach in the junior seminar from disciplines such as law, Chinese studies, the College of Agriculture Food and Ecology as well as a local artist. As with the previous themes, we try to amplify the work of those on our campus and beyond who are engaged in important work on a singular idea while not losing sight of the broad mission of the Gaines Center as an advocate for the Humanities all over campus and in the community.

This year long meditation on movement has been one of the most inspiring in my time at the Gaines Center because it forced me to confront my strengths and my limitations both physically and intellectually. The Gaines Center is a place, when it is at its best, that stretches those who come to it be they a fellow, someone on campus, or a member of the community. I hope that you all will stretch and move with me this summer and we ready ourselves for a fall of constructing/deconstructing myths and perhaps slaying a few monsters along the way.

we're always looking for new and interesting ways to engage with our fellows, friends, and the wider community So when Dr Meg Wallace approached us with a proposal for a circus arts workshop we...well, we immediately swung ourselves into this high-wire opportunity!

Dr. Wallace, an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department, teaches a hugely popular Circus and Philosophy class which inspired one of her students, Jess Farace, to start the UK Circus Club: a first-of-its-kind organization offering UK students the opportunity to gain firsthand experience of the circus arts. As the Circus Club started to get off the ground (literally and metaphorically), Meg saw the potential in offering a similar experience to both the UK and Lexington communities--and the Gaines Center was the perfect partner to make that happen!

What a magical occasion it was! Participants ranged from 6 to...quite a bit older than 6, with a wide range of physical abilities and skills. But our instructors balanced (see what we did there) their participants with the effortless grace usually reserved for the flying trapeze

Circus Arts Instructor Jesse Alford taught participants how to juggle with a wide variety of items while, at the other end of the hall, Jessica Johnson demonstrated the beauty of aerial silks

As you can see from the photos we've shared, our participants had a marvelous time, many of them attempting skills well out of their comfort zones "I learned that it is okay to fail," one participant said, after the workshop, with another participant sharing that the workshop "stretched my brain as well as my body." Universally, our participants were both surprised and impressed with their accomplishments

We're hoping that we can offer the Circus Arts Workshop again in the future. If you're even a little bit interested, check out the video below for a peek at this year's circus shenanigans!

An enslaved woman, Julia Ann Chinn was born between 1790 and 1797 in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Home to the state’s largest free Black population, the Bluegrass was also the site of Kentucky’s biggest plantations, dedicated to growing hemp, wheat, and corn. In the decade during which Chinn was born, slavery blossomed in Kentucky. The region’s earliest white settlers brought their human property with them from their home states to help grow the economy and “tame the frontier,” although the status of enslaved people wasn’t settled until 1792. That year, Kentucky became the fifteenth state to join the Union and formally legalized slavery by including the institution in Article IX of their new Constitution.

The central Bluegrass counties experienced the largest Black population growth as a result of this and other measures. And while these counties were primarily rural, most had a town center where Black people made up a sizeable proportion of the population. This included Lexington, Georgetown, in Scott County, where Julia grew up, and Frankfort, the state capitol. As our keynote, delivered by scholar Amrita Myers reveals, slavery was vitally important to the political, social, and economic life of the region that dominated the life of Julia Chinn and thousands of other Black persons, enslaved and free, down through the nineteenth century.

A packed house gathered at the Farish Theater, Lexington Central Library for the second day of the Lafayette Seminar--a panel event moderated by Dr. Vanessa Holden (Department of History).

Opening the seminar, Shea Brown (Deputy County Clerk) and Dr. Kathy Newfont (Department of History) discussed their work for the Digital Access Project as a means of preserving and digitizing Fayette County's rich African American History.

Brown and Newfont were followed by Jennifer Bartlett, Reinette Jones, and Kopana Terry who represented University of Kentucky Libraries, and shared their critical work on Freedom on the Move, a project that archives fugitives from slavery through Kentucky's historical newspapers.

Closing out the morning, Crystal Gregory (Fiber Artist/UK College of Fine Arts) discussed her work in the Material Studies Lab, connecting hemp, slavery, and fiber arts

PRESENTED BY HAYDEN OSBORNE

Hayden Osborne, a secondary English education and Lewis Honors College senior from Pikeville, Kentucky, was selected to give the 2023 Edward T. Breathitt Undergraduate Lectureship in the Humanities. Osborne’s lecture, “Take Me to the Lakes: folklore, evermore, and Wordsworth,” engaged a packed house with its imaginative exploration of how the lyrics of Taylor Swift's eighth and ninth albums, "folklore" and "evermore," take inspiration from the works of William Wordsworth. By the end of the evening, Osborne had persuaded us that Swift has truly established herself as a “new romantic."

In the spring of 2021, Taylor Swift became the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year three times, winning in 2010, 2016 and 2021. This achievement has made music critics, pop culture scholars and her fans deem her one of the most influential artists of the current generation.

While critics and fans alike have often reduced Swift to identities such as pop star, serial dater, or revenge-hungry femme fatale, Osborne's lecture presented Swift as an artist first, through a discussion of how Swift views her own work and through her writing practice, utilizing moments from interviews, documentaries, and awards show speeches.

Osborne examined the intertextuality that both "folklore" and "evermore" have with the poems of William Wordsworth--as he pointed out, this is just one way of considering her artistic merit. As the evening progressed, Osborne interrogated--with an engaging sense of humor--how Swift's songs: “seven,” “marjorie,” “the lakes” and “willow,” reflect the same themes of childhood, imagination and the natural world seen in Wordsworth's “We Are Seven,” “Lucy Gray,” and “Lines Composed...Above Tintern Abbey.” Osborne presented Swift in a new light: yes, she is a businesswoman and a brilliant performer, but she is first and foremost, one of the most prolific artists of her generation.

Tim McGraw

White Horse

Treacherous Call It What You Want

It's Time to Go