The production was first performed by the AATP in February. 

“The National Black Theatre Festival is the largest, most important venue for black theatre in the United States,” said , chair of the Department of Theatre Arts and director of “Baltimore.” “Our students will perform before audiences that include professional actors, directors, designers, theatre educators, agents, recruiters and the general public. It’s a terrific way to get our students and our program in the spotlight, in addition to great visibility for the African American Theatre Program.”

The African American Theatre Program has previously performed the plays, “Mr. Bluesman” (1997), “Monsieur Baptiste, the Con Man” (1999), “Steal Away” (2005), and “The Orphan’s Revenge” (2011) at the festival.

“Baltimore,” written by Boston playwright Kirsten Greenidge, centers on a racial incident that occurs in a New England college residence hall. The incident – a student draws a racist caricature on the door of an African-American student’s room – brings out an array of different beliefs in the students affected and living in the residence hall. The play provides social commentary on issues surrounding race, identity, sexual orientation and gender. The play also documents how difficult discussions of race and identity can be.

“It’s a terrific ensemble show with a very racially diverse cast and excellent performances by all,” Burton said.

“Nobody – to our knowledge – has tried to use this type of GIS data for a history project,” Krebs said.

On March 3, faculty members and students from the Departments of History and Geography & Geosciences went to Perryville, Kentucky, to fly drones equipped with cameras. The drones were piloted in a grid pattern over the battlefield, and took photographs of the ground from various angles. Using those photographs, Krebs and Biddle will use Agisoft, a mapping software, to put together a 3D map of the terrain.

“This is the first time that the Geography & Geosciences Department has tried this equipment out on such a large scale. Everybody wants to see what works and what doesn’t, and all wanted to try out different drones and approaches to find ways to put together a process for doing this sort of mapping,” Krebs said. “Professor Biddle, my main project partner, flies the drone, and knows the ins-and-outs of the two key software programs, ArcGIS and Agisoft.”

For the trip to Perryville, a number of additional researchers and students outside the project came along, including College of Arts & Sciences professors Robert Forbes, Andrea Gaughan, Andrew Day, and Forrest Stevens, geography alumna Laura Krauser, and Vince DeNoto, director of the National Center for Geospatial Excellence at Jefferson Community & Technical College. Geography & geosciences graduate student G. Allen Noona is also working on the project.

For more information on this project and others, visit the and the Department of Geography & Geoscience’s .

Compare that to the number of people studying Mandarin – roughly 30 million worldwide – and it is clear there is a gap to fill. Fortunately for UofL students, there is now that opportunity through the College of Arts & Sciences Classical & Modern Language Department’s Chinese Language minor program.

The program began accepting students for the first time in the fall. 

“One of the main reasons I came to UofL is that I am able to continue to learn Chinese,” said senior Kendall Malone, a Psychological & Brian Sciences major who is also enrolled in the minor program. “I plan on moving to China and bridging my psychology knowledge with my knowledge of Chinese language and culture to work addressing mental health issues there.”

The new language minor took the place of the department’s Chinese Studies minor, focused more on culture and history than language, which was transferred to the Asian Studies program. Now students can immerse themselves in a language-focused curriculum with two full-time faculty members devoted to developing and sustaining the program.

“Our undergraduates are well aware of the importance of the Chinese language — in addition to Chinese history and culture — in today’s globalized economy and diverse environment, and they welcome more opportunities to study it,” said Chinese language professor Li Zeng, director of the new minor program. “We are answering this increased demand by offering a recognized minor rather than just the occasional individualized offerings themselves.”

The Chinese Language minor provides learners of Mandarin Chinese with a standards-based, topically organized curriculum. The program promotes effective communication in Chinese, understanding of the Chinese civilization, and appreciation of global cultural diversity. Through full-fledged coursework from elementary to advanced levels, co-curricular activities, and a summer study abroad trip to China, this program complements majors as diverse as Business, Political Science, Humanities, Engineering, Geography, Medicine and History, among others. The program also opens up an array of scholarship opportunities through partnerships with U.S. government agencies, Chinese institutions, non-profit organizations and businesses.

“Apart from providing educational services for students’ language proficiency to make them better suited to today’s globalized world, this language-focused Chinese minor program also helps increase students’ success in receiving major grants like the Boren and Fulbright Awards, as well as university scholarships,” Prof. Zeng said.

For example, Chinese Studies minor and Speed School of Engineering alumnus Ben Arterburn (’08) received the prestigious Boren Award to pursue studies in China while an undergraduate at UofL. He went on to get an MA in Modern and Contemporary China from Columbia University and now works as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department. Chinese Studies minor and College of Business alumnus Will Scott (’09) was one of only 15 people worldwide accepted into the MA program in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford in 2009. And senior Calvin Grant, double majoring in Asian Studies and Geography and minoring in Chinese Language, received the World Scholars Scholarship to study Chinese in Beijing before returning to UofL to finish his undergraduate degree, intern at The Crane House and complete his senior thesis.

Even students like Kevin Zheng, who has speaks Mandarin at home with his parents, find formal instruction in the language important for future success.

“I did not learn Chinese in a school environment, which left me with a shaky foundation and not much room to improve,” said Zheng, a Chinese Language minor and Bioengineering major at the Speed School. “Learning it at an academic level helps me use language to understand interactions between people in other cultures, and it can assist me in getting a job in the future as it shows that I am capable and reliable to work with matters that require knowing Chinese.”

Since the establishment of the Chinese Language minor last semester, the program has accepted six students, is processing six more applications, and is continually fielding calls and emails from prospective students. Nationwide, the number of university students studying Chinese has tripled in recent years, according to the Modern Language Association.

But in the spring of 1976, being gay “was not the kind of thing you could say you were proud of,” Bourke said. “There was no safe place on campus or movement, there was not a sense that you could talk openly and that you would be welcomed.”

Bourke now works at Humana and is also an advocate for lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) rights and founding member of UofL’s LGBTQ Alumni Association. He and husband Michael DeLeon were plaintiffs in the 2015 landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell vs. Hodges, which ultimately granted same-sex couples the right to marry.

Bourke’s story is one of many that is now part of the Kentucky LGBTQ Heritage Project. The project, led by the Fairness Campaign, is a collaborative effort between UofL’s College of Arts & Sciences’ Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, the Williams-Nichols Collection in UofL’s Special Collections, the Kentucky Heritage Council, State Historic Preservation Office, and Preservation Louisville.

Professor Cate Fosl (Women’s & Gender Studies, and director of the Anne Braden Institute) is research director on the project, working with a group that includes Professor Dan Vivian (History) and a team of student researchers. They are composing a historical context narrative for the project that will act as the key in identifying places of LGBTQ significance in the state, as well as amending two National Register of Historic Places sites in Louisville that housed two of the state’s earliest gay bars.

The first step in writing a narrative of LGBTQ life in Kentucky were three “history harvests” held in Hindman, Lexington, and Louisville. At the events, Fosl, graduate student Wes Cunningham (History) and undergraduate Kayla Reddington (History) collected memorabilia, documents, and oral histories from LGBTQ Kentuckians and their friends in an effort to understand more about 20th century life in Kentucky.

“You can’t find out about the places without finding out about the people,” Fosl said. “This is the first step in documenting and lifting up LGBTQ heritage in Kentucky.”

One of the goals of the project is to develop a statewide inventory of landmarks in the LGBTQ community where historical markers can be installed, or already existing markers can be amended. Preservation Louisville and the Fairness Campaign applied for the grant from the National Park Service and U.S. Department of the Interior.

Kentucky is one of only two states awarded the grant. The other was given to New York, which received the first LGBTQ historic designation last year at The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The National Register of Historic Places is focusing on underrepresented communities that need to be better represented in the national register, according to Fairness Campaign Director Chris Hartman.

The historical context narrative being crafted by Fosl and her team will focus on places significant to LGBTQ heritage across the Commonwealth of Kentucky, including the two NRHP sites in downtown Louisville – the Henry Clay Building on South Third Street and Whiskey Row on Main Street. The Henry Clay housed the Beaux Arts Cocktail Lounge, which was gay “friendly” if not strictly gay, from the 1940s through 1955, and The Downtowner, then thought of as the gay bar in Louisville, which opened in Whiskey Row in 1975, according to Vivian.

“These kinds of establishments were really important, it was the difference between loneliness and isolation, and a community,” Vivian said. “There is a story worth recognizing here.”

Photo by Tom Fougerousse

Supported and led by A&S Advising, the 16-member UofL quiz bowl team represents departments across the college – from history and English to mathematics, chemistry, and urban & public affairs. It also includes five students from the J.B. Speed School and one student from the College of Business. The team is divided into divisions I and II, and is coached by A&S Advisers Matt Church and Eddie Bobbitt.

The division I team, which earned first place in the Southeast Sectional qualifying them for the national tournament, is made up of Nick Conder (PhD, Urban & Public Affairs), Megan Seldon (BA, English), Kurtis Droge (MBA), and Ramapriya Rangaraju (MS, Computer Engineering & Computer Science). The team is ranked No. 9 nationally behind Stanford.

The division II team ranked second in the Southeast Sectional, ahead of Vanderbilt University and Western Kentucky University, and is on a waitlist to compete in the championship.

Quiz Bowl features two teams competing head-to-head to answer questions from a variety of categories, including history, literature, science, fine arts, current events, sports, and popular culture. Players practice against each other on campus and then represent UofL in teams from one to four players at varsity tournaments.

Coach Matt Church played quiz bowl in high school and practiced with UofL’s team while he was getting an MA in history and an MA in higher education. Acting as coach since 2009, Church is incredibly superstitious and left a match this year after three questions because he, and the team, considered him bad luck for that round.

Freshman Lance Gibson (English & Mathematics) has been participating on quiz bowl teams for nine years, through elementary, middle, and high school. Gibson said quiz bowl is an integral part of who he is and that he would never abandon the competition.

“Every tiny piece of information we collect gives us a broader perspective and deeper insight in both natural and societal contexts,” he said. “While many others keep learning inside the classroom, we take it beyond.”