News Bureau

A Minute With™... Tamara Chaplin, a University of Illinois historian of modern France

Bruce Levine, professor of history and expert on the Civil War

The American Civil War came to an end 150 years ago with the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Five days later, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. What role did slavery play in the Confederate defeat? And how might history have been different if Lincoln had lived? University of Illinois historian Bruce Levine (pronounced La-VEEN) has written extensively about the war and its consequences. His 2013 book, "The Fall of the House of Dixie," traced how fighting the war transformed the South from within. He spoke with News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Three key issues were at the center of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: money for border enforcement, a pathway to citizenship and making it illegal to hire undocumented workers.

A Minute With...™ communication professor Ned O'Gorman

A Minute With™... Ned O'Gorman, a professor of communication affiliated with the U. of I. Program for Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security

A Minute With...™ Christopher Benson, author and professor of journalism

A Minute With™... Peter Fritzsche, a historian of modern Germany

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Think your simple wagering strategy for professional football - such as always picking the home team or the underdog - is going to pay off in the long run? Don't bet on it, say sports economists Scott Tainsky and Yoon Tae Sung.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - African-American and Hispanic students placed in ability groups for reading instruction learned less compared to demographically similar minority students who weren't grouped by ability, a new study by a University of Illinois expert in the sociology of education found.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Family debt diminishes students' prospects of graduating from college, and is particularly detrimental to black students' chances of earning degrees, suggests a new study by social work professor Min Zhan and doctoral student Deirdre Lanesskog, both at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - According to one estimate, half of Americans are confronting a civil legal problem at any one time.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Those video ads playing in the corner of your computer screen, in the midst of your multitasking, may have more impact than you realize. They may be as effective as the ads you're really watching, such as those during the Super Bowl, says a University of Illinois researcher.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - In the current world of product placement, cross-promotion, pop-up ads, and ad-driven politics, it's hard to imagine there was ever a time when advertising as an institution was severely challenged.

A Minute With™... advertising professor Michael Giardina

A Minute With™... Kenneth Cuno, a professor of Middle Eastern history

A Minute With™... sociologist Brian Dill

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The field of African American studies in U.S. higher education "is alive and well, and, in fact, growing and maturing," despite some reports to the contrary, says a new study published online this week by the department of African American studies at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Despite a number of measures undertaken by the government in Albania to curb sex trafficking, rigorous comprehensive legal and social reforms are needed to address the practices that perpetuate it, a new study led by a University of Illinois researcher indicates.

A Minute With™... medical historian Mark Micale

Ancient animal herders added to the ecological richness and diversity of the African savanna thousands of years ago – an effect that persists to the present day, a new study finds. The herders’ practice of penning their cattle, goats and sheep at night created nutrient-rich grassy glades, called hotspots, that still attract wildlife and have increased habitat diversity in the region, researchers report in the journal Nature.

Anger-prone children may benefit most from caregivers who are sensitive to their emotional needs and behavioral cues, University of Illinois researchers Nancy McElwain and  Xi Chen found in a new study.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Adults who are highly anxious can perceive changes in facial expressions more quickly than adults who are less anxious, a new study shows. By jumping to emotional conclusions, however, highly anxious adults may make more errors in judgment and perpetuate a cycle of conflict and misunderstanding in their relationships.

Illinois professor Ruby Mendenhall is focused on issues of poverty, inequality and violence, but crosses many academic boundaries in search of answers.

In a study of U.S. adults’ social media activity and polarization of their views on the Black Lives Matter movement, communication professor Stewart Coles found that people low in racial resentment who expressed themselves more frequently on these media were less supportive of BLM.

A Minute With™... Richard Tempest, the director of Illinois' Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center

What's going on in Russia and what does its president, Vladimir Putin, have in mind for the nation and for himself? Richard Tempest, a professor of Slavic literature and the head of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center who was in Russia in June, is an expert on Putin and Putin's Russia. In an interview with News Bureau writer Andrea Lynn, Tempest offered his assessments of the nation and its leader.

A Minute With™... political scientist Milan Svolik

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Communicating the relevance of one's scientific research to general audiences and developing educational outreach programs are critical to the career success of college professors and researchers, but graduate curricula often fail to help students cultivate these essential skills.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - In many states, including Illinois, married couples with children who want to untie the knot must complete court-mandated educational programs - either in group settings or through online classes - before judges will finalize their divorces.

A strong commitment to their ethnic identity may be a double-edged sword for young sexual minority Black men when they encounter sexual racism online, according to a study by U. of I. social work professor Ryan Wade.

A Minute With™... political scientist Paul Diehl

A Minute With™... political scientist Paul Diehl

Civil courts are where many people meet the legal system. Those with attorneys – often a small minority – are much more likely to see a better outcome, says a new study. More surprising, perhaps, is that lawyers’ deep knowledge of the law explains little of their impact.

It may seem incredible in an age of polarized division, but Ned O’Gorman is making a positive case for politics for those who’ve lost faith. The communication professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign argues in “Politics for Everybody” that politics is a necessity, not an option – and we know from everyday experience how to do it better, in ways not fundamentally “us versus them.”

A Minute With™... former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar

Researchers can get their inspiration from a mentor, or colleague, or perhaps even a lecture that strikes a chord. Psychology researcher Kara Federmeier got hers from her younger brother when she was still in high school.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Each year, millions of children are exposed to domestic violence, a traumatic experience that has been associated with cognitive, behavioral, social and emotional problems in childhood as well as a higher incidence of depression and premature death in adulthood. Numerous studies over the past two decades also have indicated that exposure to domestic violence (EDV) places children at higher risk of abuse and neglect.

The Super Bowl will feature car ads, beer ads, food ads – but probably none for carrots. Most food ads, game time or anytime, are pitching less-healthy fare. Kids are often the target. Do they understand what an ad is? Who made it and why? Advertising professor Michelle Nelson worked with an Illinois school district to develop an advertising literacy curriculum that also promotes healthy eating.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Even during tough economic times, a school district's decision to cut support services aimed at helping Hispanic students and their families navigate through the public school system will prove to be a sighted one, especially given long-term demographic trends and the need for a highly educated workforce, says a University of Illinois expert in social services for vulnerable populations.

An analysis of more than 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, where students write anonymous reviews of their professors, found that students most often use the words “brilliant” and “genius” to describe male professors and in academic disciplines in which women and African-Americans are underrepresented.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - It was an alarming message: A Spanish speaking woman in the Champaign area was on the brink of suicide, and a bilingual mental health professional was urgently needed for crisis intervention, but none could be found. Could anyone help?

Political corruption, minimal policing and firefighting resources, limited transportation, public works deficiencies and condemned buildings. It's not the backdrop for a prime-time cop show - this is a city three hours from Champaign.

A new book looks at aspects of how the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program affects health and well-being. “SNAP Matters” includes a chapter on obesity by University of Illinois economist Craig Gundersen, one of the book’s editors.

Champaign County, Urbana has a rich and dynamic history. Today, Urbana counts nationally known film critic Roger Ebert and several Nobel Prize laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners as current or former residents. Yet, there was no book on the history of Urbana still available in print until "Images of America: Urbana" (Arcadia Publishing), by Ilona Matkovszki and Dennis Roberts.

The daunting challenge of leaving an anthropological field site and moving to another halfway across the globe may be a situation most familiar to anthropologists, but the intellectual and emotional challenges of uprooting one's life for one's field of study are something that many scholars can relate to, says Alma Gottlieb, a UI professor of anthropology.

They baked New England's Thanksgiving pies, preached their faith to crowds of worshippers, spied for the patriots during the American Revolution, wrote that human bondage was a sin, and demanded reparations for slavery.

Oral history is a powerful historical tool, one that can illuminate the often-overlooked individual voices behind a historical event.

Historians have long been interested in patterns of human movement. Throughout history, people have had to move to survive, either through regular circuits that bring them to communities and resources or through occasional, long-distance migrations, in search of new ways of life.

As both an idea and an institution, the family has been at the heart of Chicano/a cultural politics since the Mexican American civil rights movement emerged in the late 1960s. In "Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics" (Duke University Press, 2009), Richard T. Rodríguez, a professor of English and of Latina/Latino Studies at Illinois, explores the competing notions of la familia found in movement-inspired literature, film, video, music, painting and other forms of cultural expression created by Chicano men.