By Rebekah Tilley

In 1973, Thomas Janoski was living out of backpack in India getting desperate for money. A fellow traveler told him he could sell his well-worn American passport for around $500, though if he were British he could get $1000.

Why in the world would a British passport be worth twice what an American passport is worth?” Janoski asked then. “At the time you could get into any country in the Commonwealth of Nations with a British passport. That episode peaked my interest in terms of passports as a symbol of citizenship.”

In his recently released book from Cambridge University Press, “The Ironies of Citizenship,” Janoski wipes

by Kami L. Rice

photos by Mark Cornelison

Gifted early on with an ease in learning new languages, Haralambos Symeonidis began travelling the world well before he got his first passport stamped.

Born and raised in the town of Drama in the Macedonia region of northern Greece, Symeonidis began his lifelong foray into languages naturally enough, by learning his native tongue. From that beginning, though, there has been little pause in his acquisition of new grammatical forms and vocabulary lists.

In his youth, Symeonidis decided to learn English after watching television shows broadcast in the language, and then he moved on to formal education and six years of studying French. During these school years, Symeonidis was also required to take courses

"A Greek Mountain Fort in Southern Italy. University of Kentucky Archaeological Investigations at Monte Palazzi (Passo Croceferrata, Grotteria, Calabria)" will be on exhibit March 26 through May 1, in the library’s gallery.

Paolo Visonà, adjunct associate professor of art history in UK’s Department of Art, will give a lecture on the Monte Palazzi archaeological project at 6 p.m. Monday, March 28, in the library's theater. A gallery reception will also be held from 5 to 8 p.m.

Masamichi Inoue, Japan Studies director and professor in UK's Department of Modern & Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures, has family in Japan. While Inoue's Japanese relatives stayed out of harm's way, the anthropologist spent four years as an undergraduate in Sendai, one of the areas worst hit by the tsunami.

"I used to walk along the same beaches that are now destroyed," he said. "Everything was so shocking to me, and the availability of information on Japan was overwhelming. Still, I felt that I had to do something."

Inoue encourages faculty, staff, students

Ph.D. Student

by Saraya Brewer

photos by Mark Cornelison

With both a Master’s and a doctoral degree under her belt in the past eight years, you’d probably be safe to call Jenny Mooney an academic. Much of Mooney’s time over the past decade has been spent not in the classroom or library, however, but in various prisons and drug and alcohol treatment and research centers. For the most part, Mooney’s work – academic work and career work intertwined – has been centered at the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research (CDAR), where she has conducted what she estimates to be thousands of interviews with research participants who identify themselves as substance users, most of them inmates. Mooney currently serves as a study director at CDAR for two studies funded by the

When the University of Kentucky's Environmental Studies program director position opened up last summer, chemistry Professor David Atwood enthusiastically submitted his application.

 

But UK's resident expert on the removal of metal contaminants from water wanted to see something more.

 

"In working with others across campus, I was hearing more and more about the need for an interdisciplinary environmental studies major at UK," Atwood explained. "I thought that in order to really make the director position worth it, we should expand what we already had."

 

So, Atwood met with Dean Mark Kornbluh with argument in hand.

 

But to Atwood's surprise, Kornbluh "basically described exactly what I had hoped to do,"

Whitney Turientine

International Studies, Sophomore 

by Joy Gonsalves

International Studies is as promising a program as sophomore Whitney Turientine, is a young scholar. “I always wanted to be an International Studies major,” Turientine began. “I’ve taken Spanish since second grade. I was the one in our family who was always watching travel shows on TV, but I’ve had questions about the world, politically, that no one’s been able to answer.”

Not surprisingly, soon after hearing the International Studies program had been added to the College of Arts & Sciences, Whitney decided to change her Political Science major to a minor and keep Spanish as a second major. The newness of the IS program didn’t deter her: “It’s growing and flexible,” she said, citing its strong recruitment potential as a major broad in scope. She also

by Saraya Brewer

photos by Lee Thomas

Leave it to a graduate student in film studies to hammer out aspects of horror from one of America’s most beloved family Christmas classics. “It’s Christmas film noir,” said Colleen Glenn about "It’s a Wonderful Life." “It’s an extremely dark film.” "It’s a Wonderful Life" is just one of the handful of Jimmy Stewart films that Glenn, a University of Kentucky English Ph.D. candidate with a specialty in film studies, has watched (and re-watched, analyzed, paused, rewound, and watched again) for her dissertation, in which Stewart and other great actors of the mid 20th century –– including Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne –– will each get their own chapter.

“I grew up watching old classic movies on PBS with my family, so I really have my parents to thank for my original interest in film,” Glenn

Linguistics Undergraduate Student

Jessica Holman

"The Place Where Language and People Cross"

by Jessica Fisher

photos by Shaun Ring

If you think that linguistics is just about learning a bunch of different languages then, frankly, you have been misinformed. But don’t take it to heart—most people share this common misconception. Luckily, one of UK’s finest linguistics students, Jessica Holman, is able to clarify what the major really entails and why she is so proud of her eastern Kentucky roots, accent and all.

Born in London, Ky., right in the foothills of Appalachia, Holman developed a love for language at an early age—her native Appalachian English, unique in its own right. After all there is Standard English, which Holman said, “we all need to learn so everyone can understand each other,” but which she also