News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Evelyne Bloch-Dano, the author of "Madame Proust: A Biography," will give a lecture about her new book Oct. 15 on the U. of I. campus.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Behavioral problems among teenagers and preteens can be blamed on the violence, sex and gore portrayed in the media marketed to them - that was the topic of televised public hearings held by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 to address the scourge of comic books. The hearings, which resulted in the decimation of what was an enormous comic book industry, had been inspired in large part by the book "Seduction of the Innocent," by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, based on his own case studies.

A Minute With™... Christine Jenkins, a professor of library and information science

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The World Series may be over, but the echo of baseball's deep past is very much in the air in LeAnne Howe's new novel, "Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story" (Aunt Lute Books).

A Minute With™... history professor Adrian Burgos Jr.

A Minute With™... Willie Cade, an adjunct professor in industrial design

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The new Beschloss Family Media Design Center at the University of Illinois College of Communications will be dedicated Sept. 22.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Two best-selling writers will discuss their work and their craft as guests of the University of Illinois Library.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - On the eve of the 103rd anniversary of her death on Jan. 22, the woman whose name defined an age - arguably the most famous woman of modern times - comes to life in a new and myth-shattering biography.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - What do Madonna and the Bible have in common? What about the French poet Charles Baudelaire and the boxing legend Muhammad Ali?

Elizabeth Hoiem, an information sciences professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, examines how children’s literature and material culture responded to industrialization and shaped the class politics of playful learning in her new book “The Education of Things.”

Dennis Baron (he/him/his), a University of Illinois professor emeritus of English, writes about the history of pronoun use and how we adapt the language to fit our circumstances.

Korean diasporic theater takes center stage in a new collection of plays compiled by Esther Kim Lee, a professor of theater and of Asian American studies at the UI.

Five years ago, with a Fulbright Fellowship funding his summer study in Malta, U. of I. architecture professor Mir Ali agreed to assist the Malta Environmental and Planning Authority and the University of Malta in determining whether more skyscrapers should be built in the tiny island nation. As one of the most densely populated countries in the world, Malta consists of a group of islands, the largest of which is the "rock" just off the toe of Italy. The Republic of Malta's government had received close to 50 proposals from developers wanting to build high-rise office buildings, hotels and condominiums.

Within the past two decades, technological advances have changed the way readers consume text, from online blogs to e-readers. Some critics and scholars have suggested that we were embarking on a radically new age of information.

The U.S. media features Latina stars such as Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria, but that same media often reinforces the image of Latinos as eternal foreigners, always having to prove they belong.

Memories are essential to our personal identities, and to understanding life and our surroundings. The book, "Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation" (MIT Press), co-written by a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the UI, explores the process by which we organize and retain memories.

Hong Kong was a battleground for the competing ideologies of China, Taiwan and the U.S. in the post-World War II period. The conflict drove the expansion and transformation of the Hong Kong media, says history professor Po-Shek Fu.

In a new book, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor David Beck describes how the federal government used bribery to end its legal and political relationships with Native American tribes.

Excessive reading by young men was seen as a cause of declining virility and of the perceived national decline in fin-de-siècle France.

University of Illinois religion professor Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz writes about Nepal’s best-known Hindu narrative in her new book and what it tells us about the country’s culture and the history of Hinduism there.

Benjamin Bross used the public square and historic events that took place there to explain the emergence and evolution of Mexican identities over time.

Robert McKim, a professor emeritus of religion, edited a book of essays examining the issues raised by Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical calling for protection of Earth and its environment.

Two manuscripts that played a crucial role in the Czech cultural revival turned out to be forgeries. But their contributions to Czech literature and national culture were real, says Slavic languages and literatures professor David Cooper.  

History professor Robert Morrissey wrote in his new book, “People of the Ecotone,” about how the ecology of the tallgrass prairie shaped the culture and created unique opportunities for the Indigenous people who lived there.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - This summer, a new book co-written by a University of Illinois librarian and faculty member is the foundation for an exhibition that explores the early history of the English language and the role that printing played in its development.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Scholars who study visual culture on the Internet always see more than meets the eye, but one professor has widened her scope even more, trying to adjust the ways the rest of us look at race and gender on the Web - and off.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - As many Americans know, Sam Clemens led a rich and complex life - sometimes as Mark Twain, sometimes not. He usually is remembered as a journalist, stand-up comic, world traveler, philosopher, and literary giant.

Landscape design research can help solve environmental problems related to water systems.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - While it may be tempting to dismiss as a censor anyone who wants to restrict access to a book, such individuals understand that books are powerful and have the potential to change lives, said Emily Knox, who recently wrote about the people who raise challenges to reading material.

University of Illinois religion professor Robert McKim edited a new book, “Religious Perspectives on Religious Diversity,” that explores how members of various religions view those outside of their faiths.

Japan entered a period of colonial expansion in the late 19th century, starting with its annexation of Taiwan in 1895. Within just a few years of this colonial conquest, an anti-imperialism movement began in Japan. One of the key figures in the movement was Kōtoku Shūsui, a journalist and anarchist who wrote a book opposing imperialism and who was executed by the Japanese government in 1911.

An expert on rare-book crimes tells the story of a thief who plundered libraries across the country, cutting irreplaceable antique illustrations from rare books.

A new book by Illinois information sciences professors Gerald McWorter and Kate Williams-McWorter tells how a former slave founded an integrated town in western Illinois that became a station on the Underground Railroad.

 A Minute With™... journalism and advertising professor Steven Helle

Passes for the 19th annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, or "Ebertfest," coming April 19-23, 2017, will go on sale Nov. 1. The passes cover all 12 or more screenings during the five-day event at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign.

Think Brazil and you might think beaches, rain forest, the 2016 Olympics – all far removed from central Illinois. Yet the University of Illinois is perhaps the most comprehensive center of Brazilian studies in the U.S.

The British Empire was not the model of peace and stability, the “Pax Britannica,” as it’s often portrayed. Dissent and disruption were the rule, not the exception, according to Antoinette Burton, in her new book "The Trouble With Empire."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Bruce Rhoads, a professor of geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has received a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - If it seems that there have been quite a few rationales for going to war in Iraq, that's because there have been quite a few - 27, in fact, all floated between Sept. 12, 2001, and Oct. 11, 2002, according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All but four of the rationales originated with the administration of President George W. Bush.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - As a cautionary tale, the latest issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly could not make better reading for the '08 presidential candidates, blue and red.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Dire predictions of impending doom for the future of legal education should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, says a University of Illinois business law expert.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - When tornadoes, floods and other natural disasters unleash their furies on communities, the losses can be especially devastating for small-business owners with limited budgets and flimsy safety nets. But when the skies clear, and the cleanup and rebuilding begins, savvy owners may actually find a silver - or "green" - lining beneath the rubble and ruin.

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library recently hosted 13 children ages 8 to 11 for a daylong camp that ended with a cursing contest. These were Elizabethan curses ("Thou craven, milk-livered flax-wench" was the winner), judged primarily on penmanship. It was part of Valerie Hotchkiss' campaign to save the art of cursive writing and, equally important, the ability to read cursive writing.

The 20th annual EU Day at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will feature an online talk by former Canadian political leader turned academic Michael Ignatieff about threats to intellectual freedom in Europe.

A Minute With™... Jeff Woods, a professor of kinesiology and integrative immunology and behavior

Acquiring new medical knowledge and assessing health are not as objective as people think, said history professor Rana Hogarth, who is the adviser for a new series of podcasts by the Science History Institute in Philadelphia to explore issues of racism in science and medicine.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - An exhibit chronicling the "long and extraordinary" career of federal judge Harlington Wood Jr., a high-ranking public servant who, among other critical roles, served as chief negotiator for the U.S. Department of Justice at Wounded Knee, is running at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, his alma mater.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Five prize-winning writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry will read from their works this semester at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Kathleen Graber - a former high school English teacher who was inspired to write poetry after taking students on a field trip - will read from her critically acclaimed collections at 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 13 (Wednesday) at the Illini Union Bookstore.