Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media professor Adam Banks sits down with Renee Shaw on KET's Connections to talk about digital communications, models of Black leadership, new media platforms, and what this means for minorities facing the Digital Divide. His second book, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age, develops a specific approach to teaching writing rooted in African-American rhetorical traditions and was published by Southern Illinois University Press's Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series. Watch the full interview here.

By Erin Holaday, Colleen Glenn

It’s almost time for class and you’re still in your dorm room. But you’re not going to be late. There’s plenty of time to walk downstairs.

Imagine what residence halls will be like in 2020. That’s what the College of Arts & Sciences did when they created a new living and learning community at Keeneland Hall.

Debuting this fall, 

"They’ve taken the real Martin Luther King and gone—and we have to reclaim him," said University of Kentucky professor Adam Banks, evoking a Langston Hughes poem to describe the ways media commentators have sampled soundbites from King and ignored the movement he led and the causes he stood for.
 
Banks, an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Media in UK’s College of Arts and Sciences, is using King and the Civil Rights movement to kick off "The Digital Griots Project," an idea designed to bring African American communities in Lexington and Syracuse, N.Y., together in dialogue by linking oral traditions, literacy and technologies.

Graduate Student Spotlight By Saraya Brewer
Photos by Mark Cornelison

Amy Anderson’s academic history has taken a sharp turn since her early undergrad pre-medical path. “We had to kill things in our lab class and that was the end of that,” she laughed. “I always liked to write – I went straight back to the English Department.”

Though she has studied English for close to a decade now, Anderson is quick to admit that her “academic ADD” still stands: “I can’t focus on a time period. I’m interested in anything you put in front of me.” 

Her broad and varied interests make Anderson the perfect candidate for the brand new division of the University of Kentucky English department: Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Media. Anderson says she was excited about rhetoric, which is essentially