Gaines Center to host 2026 Lafayette Seminar: Humanities in Action
The University of Kentucky’s Gaines Center for the Humanities will host the 2026 Lafayette Seminar, “Humanities in Action,” 3-6 p.m. Thursday, April 16, in the Davis Marksbury Building.
This year’s seminar will feature presentations from the Gaines Cooperatives, 3-4 p.m., and Junior Gaines Fellows, 4-5 p.m., uncovering the origins and new directions for the humanities.
“The 2026 Lafayette Seminar continues the tradition of offering a forum for campus and community discussion of public-facing humanities issues,” said Michelle Sizemore, Ph.D., John R. Gaines Endowed Chair and director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities. “This year's focus was inspired by both our annual theme of ‘Origins’ and our curricular commitment to the applied humanities, reflected in the program’s title ‘Humanities in Action.’”
The event will begin with “flash talks” summarizing the work stemming from the UK Gaines Center’s 2026 Humanities Cooperatives: Health and the Humanities, Global Crisis, Appalachian Water, Global Cities, Legal Options for Saving Trees and Digital Pedagogies.
The Appalachian Water Humanities Cooperative is one example of the interdisciplinary collaboration that will be featured during the seminar.
“This cooperative opportunity has brought together interested parties with backgrounds in history, poetry, medicine, environmental science, geology, archives, oral history, community engagement, disaster planning, sociology and many more,” said Matt Strandmark, co-leader of the Appalachian Water Humanities Cooperative. “It has not only been a tool to promote conversations and shared work, but also a means to generate and ideate future partnerships, projects and initiatives related to these topics. We believe that this work is vital to the University of Kentucky’s land-grant mission to serve the Commonwealth and its people.”
“The Cooperatives’ work highlights how the study of the humanities helps us better understand and intervene in a host of social issues,” Sizemore said. “At the same time, the Junior Gaines Fellows’ project emphasizes the real-world applications of humanities knowledge, methods and skills, preparing students to use their humanities training in practice as well as in theory.”
From 4-5 p.m., the Junior Gaines Fellows will present the culmination of their yearlong applied humanities project researching the history and origins of the three historic Gaines houses — the Betts House, Bingham Davis House and Commonwealth House.
Gaines Associate Director Chelsea Brislin, Ph.D., oversaw this work alongside Dan Vivian, Ph.D., associate professor of historic preservation in the UK College of Design.
“The junior Gaines Fellows have worked incredibly hard to answer many longstanding questions about these historic houses,” Brislin said. “Using a vast array of primary and secondary sources at UK and within the community, they’ve contextualized these histories within the landscape of the neighborhood and UK and shared their findings in an arcGIS StoryMap format that will be accessible to the public.”
The Lafayette Seminar is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged and available online.
For more information, contact the Gaines Center at 859-257-1537 or email Brislin at clbris4@uky.edu.
Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lafayette Seminar has previously covered topics such as the local economy, university-community relations, public art and urban development.
