Established to honor Edward T. Breathitt, an eminent Kentuckian (Governor of KY, 1963-67) and a UK alum with exceptional passion for higher education and the humanities, this lectureship is awarded to an undergraduate whose qualities of mind and spirit have been expressed eloquently on one of more of the basic concerns of the humanities: form, value, and memory. The award is presented by the Gaines Center for the Humanities, and the Edward T. Breathitt Lectureship recipient receives a special award and an honorarium of $500.
Applications for the prestigious 2026 Edward T. Breathitt Undergraduate Lectureship in the Humanities are now open. Applications are due Monday, March 2, 2026, and can be found here. All applicants will be notified of the status of their application as soon as possible following the deadline.
This year's Breathitt Lecture will take place on Thursday April 9, 2026 at 6.00pm.
Click the links below to view available lectures.
Past Lectures:
- 2025: Lucas Carlos de Lima, Architecture, presented Crystal Palaces: Building a Better World Amidst Social Chaos.
- 2024: Joshua Cola, Art History, presented A Hit of Nostalgia: Mark McCloud's Through the Looking Glass and Blotter Art in the 1990s.
- 2023: Hayden Osborne, Secondary English Education, presented Take Me to the Lakes: folklore, evermore, and Wordsworth
- 2022: Matthew Kluemper, Digital Media + Design, presented Photographic Retellings of Kentucky Urban Legends
- 2021: Emily Andreasson, Interiors + Modern/Classical Languages, presented:
Ellipsis: Creating Space for Expression and Healing Amidst the Liminal Experience of Displacement - 2019: Tiana Thé, Political Science + Environmental/Sustainability Studies, presented:
The Era of #MeToo: Ignoring a Dangerous Contradiction in a Prism of Freedom
To see a list of past Breathitt lectures prior to 2019, click here.