Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Initiative to explore perspectives on history, culture of Western Hemisphere

CHAMPAIGN,Ill. – The Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois will explore the impact of indigenous poetry on the expressive cultures of the Western Hemisphere with a poetry reading featuring Inés Hernández-Avila and Heid Erdrich on Tuesday (Sept. 13).

Hernández-Avila, a member of the Nez Perce tribe, is a professor of Native American studies at the University of California at Davis, where she also directs the Chicana/Latina Research Center. Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, is the author of four poetry collections and was the winner of the Minnesota Book Award in 2009.

The theme will continue on Wednesday (Sept. 14) with a poetry roundtable featuring Erdrich, Hernández-Avila and Emilio del Valle Escalante, a professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of “Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala: Coloniality, Modernity and Identity Politics,” published in 2009.

Both events are free and open to the public. The poetry reading begins at 4 p.m. in Knight Auditorium in the Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana. The poetry roundtable begins at noon in the Lucy Ellis Lounge in the Foreign Languages Building, 707 S. Mathews Ave., in Urbana.

These events continue the center’s initiative on sovereignty and autonomy in the Western Hemisphere, exploring the shared history of the region. Frederick Hoxie, the Swanlund Professor of history and a member of the CAS permanent faculty, said the initiative provides an opportunity for anthropology, history and literature specialists to share perspectives on the histories and cultures of the Western Hemisphere.

“It brings together people who work alongside each other but don’t necessarily talk to each other – Latin American studies, North American history, U.S. history and American Indian studies,” Hoxie said. “The idea is to step back and look at the hemisphere as a place where there was a series of common historical processes that took place: European arrival, conquest, creation of new nation-states, conflict with the indigenous communities, and then the re-emergence of modern indigenous communities.”

In mid-October, Bolivian filmmaker Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui will spend a week on the U. of I. campus screening her films as part of the initiative. She is a sociologist and activist of Aymara descent, the author of several books (most notably “Oppressed but not Defeated: Peasant Struggles Among the Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia, 1900-1980”), and the recipient of a 1990 Guggenheim fellowship. She is a professor emeritus at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, and advises President Evo Morales’ administration on coca issues. Details of her visit will be announced at cas.illinois.edu/home.

[ Email | Share ]

Read Next

Health and medicine Life sciences Veterinary medicine Two men in a lab. The seated man holds a hologram projection of a brain.

Mutation increases enzyme in mouse brains linked to schizophrenia behaviors

Researchers found a key role for an enzyme regulating glycine in the brain while investigating a rare genetic mutation found in two patients with schizophrenia.

Honors A photo collage featuring all three Sloan Fellowship awardees.

Three Illinois professors named Sloan Research Fellows

Three Illinois scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awardees represent “the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward.” This year’s Illinois recipients are chemistry professors Angad Mehta and Lisa Olshansky, and materials science and engineering professor Yingjie Zhang.

Life sciences Graphic with the title "42nd Insect Fear Film Festival" in a scary font and with a picture of a tarantula.

Insect Fear Film Festival to feature ‘hairy, scary’ tarantulas

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The 2025 Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will feature “Tarantulas: Hairy, Scary Spiders” as its theme and a Hollywood bug wrangler who works with the 8-legged creatures as a special guest. The festival, which is hosted by the Entomology Graduate Student Association and is in its 42nd […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010