Author: Paula Keshderian

Team Kentucky Gallery includes photos by two Berea College seniors

Last modified: March 6, 2023

Photos by two Berea College students are currently on display in the Team Kentucky Gallery, located in the state Capitol Building in Frankfort.

Images by Eduardo Alvarez-Esparza and Gaston Jarju—both members of the Berea College Class of 2023—had images chosen from more than 150 entries submitted from across the state. Only 38 photos were chosen for display.

Alvarez-Esparza’s photograph, titled “Underground Silhouette,” is a candid shot captured during a trip to Carter Caves State Resort Park in Olive Hill, Ky.

A business administration major with a concentration in marketing, Alvarez-Esparza started his journey with photography during the COVID-19 pandemic while he was at home in Alabama. He expanded his skills in event photography, student portraits and post-production editing as part of his labor position as an associate photographer for the Berea College Marketing and Communications office.

“Sometimes, we forget to find passions outside of college,” Alvarez-Esparza said. “I’m glad to have found mine and to share it with the world.”

Jarju’s photograph, titled “Adventures with Mountaineers,” was taken during Berea College’s annual Mountain Day at the Pinnacles of Berea.

An international student from Gambia majoring in computer science and minoring in business administration, Jarju took on photography when he started his labor position as a student photographer in Marketing and Communications.

“I wanted to do something what was not coding,” said Jarju. “I wanted to use my creativity in any way. Photography is a way to find beauty in the little things and to find comfort in each moment I capture.”

Gov. Andy Beshear and First Lady Britainy Beshear launched the Team Kentucky Gallery to showcase Kentuckians’ artistic talents in the main halls of the state Capitol in Frankfort. According to the gallery’s website, the Beshears “believe the Capitol, as the people’s house, is the best place to highlight Kentuckians’ voices as represented through art.”

The current exhibit runs through July 31, 2023 and can be viewed here.

Photos and the video news release can be viewed here and here.

Esteemed New York Times best-selling author Roxane Gay to speak at Berea College convocation

Last modified: February 27, 2023

Writer, professor, editor and social commentator Roxane Gay will speak at the Berea College convocations on Thursday, March 2 sponsored by the bell hooks center as part of the center’s March 2023 programming calendar.

Gay will join bell hooks center founder and director, M. Shadee Malaklou, for a conversation about hooks’ fearless feminism. Entitled “Writing Toward a Better World,” the pair will think and dream with hooks about how to write toward a better world, addressing topics ranging from trauma to love to how we dismantle the intersecting structures of oppression that hooks names “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

Gay’s writing appears in “Best American Mystery Stories 2014,” “Best American Short Stories 2012,” “Best Sex Writing 2012,” “A Public Space,” “McSweeney’s,” “Tin House,” “Oxford American,” “American Short Fiction,” “Virginia Quarterly Review” and many more publications. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books “Ayiti,” “An Untamed State,” the New York Times bestselling “Bad Feminist” and “Hunger,” and the nationally bestselling “Difficult Women.” She is also the author of “World of Wakanda” for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also working on television and film projects. In addition, she has a newsletter, “The Audacity” and a podcast, “The Roxane Gay Agenda.”

The convocation begins at 3 p.m. in Phelps Stokes Chapel and is free and open to the public.

On Wednesday, March 15, the bell hooks center will host Jennifer Marley for its Gender Talk series. Gender Talk is a monthly series for which the bell hooks center invites distinguished feminist scholars to speak with Berea’s campus and community about contemporary issues. Marley is the co-founder of a popular podcast about indigenous life-worlds, named “The Red Nation Podcast” and is a doctoral student specializing in queer indigenous studies and indigenous feminism. The event will be from noon to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

 

The following week, on Thursday, March 23, the bell hooks center will host a colloquium event with poet and writer Damaris Hill, who was a friend of bell hooks’. The colloquium series provides an opportunity for students to learn more about how they might apply feminism to their personal and professional practices. The event will be from noon to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Finally, on Wednesday, March 29, the bell hooks center will host a student activist talk with international Ukrainian Berea College student Anya Kasianova, a member of the Class of 2024. The event will be from noon to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

More information about the bell hooks center can be found here.

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Berea College Library Offering Historical Look at Dr. Carter G. Woodson

Last modified: February 21, 2023

The Berea College Hutchins Library is offering the public a chance to learn more about Berea College graduate and historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson during the library’s upcoming Friday Finds series. Continue reading Berea College Library Offering Historical Look at Dr. Carter G. Woodson →

Registration Now Open for Spring Classes at The Woodworking School at Pine Croft

Last modified: December 1, 2022

The Woodworking School at Pine Croft, a division of Berea College Student Craft, is now registering for spring 2023 classes.

The Woodworking School at Pine Croft

Andy Glenn, head of The Woodworking School at Pine Croft, works on a project during this year’s classes. Registration for spring 2023 classes is now open.

Continue reading Registration Now Open for Spring Classes at The Woodworking School at Pine Croft →