Janice W Fernheimer

Professor, Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies

Faculty

1303 Patterson Office Tower

jfernheimer@uky.edu

(859) 257-6973

Last Revised: Nov 15th, 2022

Professional Biography

Janice W Fernheimer is the author of Stepping into Zion: Hatzaad Harishon, Black Jews, and the Remaking of Jewish Identity (University of Alabama Press, 2014), the coeditor of Jewish Rhetorics: History, Theory, Practice (Brandeis University Press, 2014), and co-founder and organizer of the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Jewish Kentucky Oral History Project housed at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral history.

The Jewish Kentucky Oral History Project currently includes 101 interviews and continues to grow https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/catalog/xt72ng4gqc3f, and a set of interviews focus specifically on Jewish involvement in the Kentucky bourbon industry. In collaboration with author/illustrator JT Waldman, she is currently researching and writing a transmedia project (historical fiction web comic and podcast series), America’s Chosen Spirit, based on oral histories and archival materials that detail the influences of Jews, women, African Americans, and immigrants on the Kentucky bourbon industry.

Education

B.A. English with Honors, Jewish Studies, University of Maryland

M.A. American Literature, University of Texas, Austin

Ph.D. English, Rhetoric and Writing, University of Texas, Austin

Course Instruction

WRD 225: Craft Writing (3)

Course Description: Instruction and practice in writing for the food and beverage industry. Emphasis on the history and culture of the craft beer industry and common practices in written and digital communication, argumentation and persuasion, narrative, and engagement with social media.

WRD 569: Composing Oral History: Bourbon Oral History (3)

Course Description: In this course, students will build the historical bourbon record by interviewing women bourbon industry experts, leaders, insiders. Students will learn about oral history as a method, bourbon as an industry, and the art of interviewing itself. By semester’s end students will know how to craft a strong set of questions, conduct an original oral history interview, reflect on their process, and create persuasive materials aimed at public audiences. Interviews will be archived in the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History as part of the Women in Bourbon Oral History Project. Note: Students who have enrolled in the past have gone on to launch their own bourbon brands; become distillers at Willet, Bulleit and other distilleries; become Bourbon educators, or work at Heaven Hill learning about bourbon law as paid interns.

Term(s) Taught: Spring 2023

College Resources

Contact Information

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