Creative expression and disease aren't two topics that are often juxtaposed, but UKC 310: Art and Epidemics, will explore five diseases from a creative and technical angle: tuberculosis, AIDS, cancer, alcoholism, and the plague - through a variety of creative lenses, including film, short fiction, poetry, and art. Rita Basuray and Katherine Rogers-Carpenter will co-teach the fall 2013 course, looking at the parallels between scientific and creative writing, and where these forms diverge. 

In May 2013, ten students will go to Costa Rica to do ethnographic writing for English 205: Advanced Composition. Steve Alvarez of WRD is taking the group to the town of Heredia for four weeks. The course meets the graduation requirement for writing, and will include service learning opportunities and plenty of cultural experiences. For more information about taking this class, please contact the instructor. 

The words “hip” and “hipster” carry around a lot of baggage. Often, due to misconceptions, "hipster" is used as an insult meant to suggest some sort of failed or inauthentic attempt at being "hip." But what if that isn’t what “hip” is? What if “hip” isn’t some obsession with the fleeting but a more permanent state?

In the weeks and months leading up to the 2012 election, the University of Kentucky and the College of Arts and Sciences held events to help students become more engaged with the political process. One such event, as detailed in another article, was a collective viewing of the second of three Presidential debates this season.

WRD is offering a unique course in October. A&S 100-006, Composing with Visuals, focuses on the visual aspect of digital communication skills. Rachel Elliott, who is the instructor for the course, talks about the ways students will create visuals to explore identities, tell stories, and interpret information, and present findings via photography, film, and infographics. The course begins in mid-October 2012.

For more information about the course, or to enroll, please contact your advisor.

The Division of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media is excited to welcome professor Brian McNely to its faculty!

Professor McNely joins us this fall studying how people work and interact. He researches professional writing in digital environments, tracing the writing that people do in order to find out how they get things done, how they make meaning from the work they do, and how they share that meaning with others.