KU News Release

KU senior advances in Rhodes scholarship competition

John Kuhn

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas senior from Jamestown has advanced in the competition for one of 32 prestigious Rhodes scholarships, which provide tuition and living expenses for graduate study in Great Britain.

John Michael Kuhn is the son of Daniel Kuhn of Jamestown and of Carla Moore of Salina and is a Concordia High School graduate. He is majoring in English with a goal of researching and teaching the connections between language, identity and nationalism. “Language marks identity and power as surely as geography,” Kuhn wrote in his application.

The Rhodes Foundation selects 32 scholars annually. Rhodes competitions take place Nov. 16 and 17 in 16 U.S. districts. Finalists for Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi will interview in Kansas City, Mo. Two winners are selected from each of the districts and will be announced Nov. 17. Separate state interviews are no longer conducted.

KU students have won 25 Rhodes scholarships since 1904, more than all other Kansas colleges and universities combined. Rhodes scholarships were first offered in 1903 and may be used only at Oxford University.

Kuhn would like to pursue a master's degree in English literature at Oxford University, focusing on the interplay between language and politics in the 17th century. “This period saw the beginning of a genuine national anxiety about purifying and standardizing English, an anxiety that is still very much with us today.”

As a freshman, Kuhn was a promising biochemistry major focused on a career in medicine. During his sophomore year, he took an elective course in Shakespeare, ultimately transforming not only his opinion of the study of language and literature but eventually his career plans. Following that course and his experience in the University Scholars Program, KU's mentoring program offered to top sophomores annually, Kuhn said that he no longer saw the humanities as a “useless academic appendage (but) a vital part of the preservation, expansion and transmission of human cultural achievement.”

Kuhn co-directs Students Tutoring for Literacy, a KU instruction program for diverse populations learning English as a second language, including students, adults and convicts. He is also an undergraduate teaching assistant for introductory biology and chemistry lab classes. As a junior, he was selected for membership in two national honor societies: Pi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi.

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