Events

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Kentucky Civil War Round Table and Transylvania University will host a presentation by David Blight Monday, Sept. 17 at 6:30 p.m. in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center’s Haggin Auditorium. The lecture is titled “Civil War and Emancipation in American Memory, Then and Now.” Blight is a professor of history at Yale University and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Following the presentation, Blight will answer questions from the audience. Yale calls Blight “one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the US Civil War and its legacy.” He served  on the board of advisers to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and is the author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era. He spoke at Transylvania’s Presidential Inaugural symposium in the spring of 2011.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Poet and professor Nikky Finney, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, will deliver the convocation address for the beginning of the academic year at Transylvania University on Sunday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium. Her presentation is entitled “The Art of Being Taken With Yourself.” Finney is Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. Her 2011 collection of poems, Head Off & Split, was published by Northwestern University Press and won the National Book Award. The collection caused critics to hail Finney as “…one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today….” (Kwame Dawes, author of Hope’s Hospice) and as a writer who “…takes the reader to a wonderfully alive world where the musical possibilities of language overflow with surprise and innovation.” (Bruce Weigl, author of What Saves Us)  Finney was raised in South Carolina as the daughter of a civil rights attorney and a teacher and came of age during the civil rights and black arts movements. Those facts of her upbringing continue to exert powerful influences on her writing and teaching. Many of her poems relate intimately to emblematic figures and events in African American life, from civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. The National Book Award nominating form said that Finney’s poems dramatize the struggle for justice and speak of “…family and politics, violence and compassion;

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University will kick off a series of healthy cooking classes with Wholesome Chef Carolyn Gilles on August 28. The monthly class is offered to all Transylvania students for free and will be held in the university’s hospitality lab. Senior Eryn Hornberger, the food and dining committee chair for Transylvania’s Sustainability Council, is thrilled to help coordinate the event as the intern for the university’s sustainability office. “As a student, I understand, you want food that is cheap, easy, and fast. A lot of people put cooking off—it’s easy to go to Taco Bell,” Hornberger said. She believes these classes could change that.  “Working with The Wholesome Chef will hopefully encourage and provide the opportunity for Transylvania students to become acclimated with the culture of Lexington and to view the buy-local, eat-local movement as progressive change—not a trend, but a way of life.” Gilles was trained at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts and cooked at the famous Candle Café in New York. Later she founded The Wholesome Chef, a Lexington cooking school that focuses on teaching the connection between food and health. She will boil down her cooking techniques for students, using recipes that can be made in a dorm room, requiring only a cutting board and a knife. For Gilles, there’s a direct correlation between what we eat and quality of life. “Home Economics classes don’t exist anymore,” she says. “They were replaced with

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Kirk Whalum will perform at Transylvania University Saturday, Aug. 4 as part of the Lexus Smooth Jazz Fest. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the acclaimed event, which is presented by the African American Forum and will be held at Transylvania for the first time. The festival will be held outdoors on Old Morrison front lawn on Third Street between Broadway and Mill and will celebrate contemporary American jazz, with live music, food, and examples of Kentucky culture. Whalum won a Grammy Award for Best Gospel Song in 2011 for “Hello Fear” and is a successful solo player and collaborator, featured on hit songs including “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. His most recent album, Romance Language, debuted at number one on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart. The African American Forum is a non-profit organization based in Lexington that develops programs to support the artistic, cultural and educational achievements of African Americans in order to embrace diversity and create a greater, united culture. Net proceeds from the Lexus Smooth Jazz Fest will benefit the African American Forum Endowment Fund. Tickets start at $30 and are on sale now at AAFinc.com or by calling (859) 255-2653. Group rates are available.