News Bureau

A Minute With™... Rini B. Mehta, a professor of comparative and world literature

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - If you think Facebook, Twitter and other Web sites that foster online communication and interaction are merely vapid echo chambers of self-promotion, think again, say two University of Illinois professors who study computer-mediated communication and the Internet.

News coverage of the Vietnam War did not have the effect on popular support that many believe, says a University of Illinois researcher.

With world leaders gathering Sept. 1 to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe, U. of I. history professor Peter Fritzsche describes how Germans came to embrace Nazi rule, especially in Hitler’s first 100 days.

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

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Although World War I has faded from cultural memory, overshadowed by more dramatic and unambiguous conflicts that both preceded and followed it, the Great War continues to shape Americans' interpretations of their nation, its war-craft and its soldiers today.

A Minute With™... Wendy Haight, a professor of social work

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.

A Minute With™... William C. Sullivan, a professor of landscape architecture

Russia is trying to sow disruption and division around the U.S. presidential election in order to promote its own geopolitical interests.

Two Illinois professors tell the story of a secret Hollywood studio at the heart of the Cold War and the early nuclear age.

The increasing number of bills aimed at limiting transgender rights is part of the rise in authoritarianism in the U.S., said Toby Beauchamp, a professor of gender and women’s studies.

Author Richard Powers, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois, has won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel “The Overstory.”

A Minute With™... Jason Chambers, a professor of advertising

A Minute With™... anthropology professor Alma Gottlieb

A Minute With™... John Murphy, a professor of communication

The brain processes ironic or sarcastic emojis in the same way it does ironic or sarcastic words.

A Minute With...™ Alecia Swasy, professor of business journalism

Illinois students in a Hittite class learn to write the ancient language in clay using cuneiform symbols.

An Illinois professor looks at presidential speechmaking through one of its more-eloquent practitioners, John F. Kennedy.

A Rare Book and Manuscript Library exhibit will showcase typewriters used by Hugh Hefner, Roger Ebert, Carl Sandburg and James Jones.

The University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired a manuscript written by Sir Isaac Newton that includes instructions for making the philosopher’s stone.

History professor Eugene Avrutin explores the history of racism in Russia over the past 150 years, from a society that was relatively free of racial violence to the elevation of whiteness under President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Five University of Illinois faculty members have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2016 – the second year in a row that the Urbana campus has garnered more of these awards than any single institution.

Pandemics of the past are getting new attention, among them the plague of the 14th century. Known as the Black Death, it was medieval, European, bubonic and spread by rats – at least that’s what most of us think. Much of that needs adjustment, however, in large part due to discoveries of the past decade, says Carol Symes, a professor of medieval history at Illinois.

“Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times,” co-edited by Illinois history professor Antoinette Burton, examines the roles that animals played in the British Empire – both in advancing and in disrupting British imperial power.

A U. of I. journalism alumnus who is now the newsroom attorney for The New York Times got some unexpected online attention last week. The focus of that attention was his response to an open letter from Donald Trump’s attorney, demanding the paper retract and apologize for a story. McCraw’s brief letter to the attorney, published on the Times site, went viral on social media and shot to the top of the paper's most-read content. In an interview, he talks about the letter, his job and what he learned at Illinois.

In early 2014, months before the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement got its start, Michael Schlosser, the director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, began offering police recruits classes that challenged their views about race and racism, introduced them to critical race theory and instructed them in methods to de-escalate potentially volatile encounters with members of minority groups.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Despite the increased popularity of geek culture - movies based on comic books, video games, virtual worlds - and the ubiquity of computers, the geek's close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture. This may help explain why women and minorities are increasingly shying away from careers in information technology, says Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Black gay men were largely missing in both black and gay history, so Kevin Mumford, who specializes in both, set out to tell their story. “I wanted to reclaim a history that had been washed over, that had been overlooked,” said Mumford, a University of Illinois history professor. He wanted to show how “black gay lives matter.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Robber barons apparently didn't come by their titles easily. Just how hard they had to work - on both sides of the law - to hold on to their empires is revealed in a new book about one particularly ingenious and controversial tycoon.

With its easy-to-miss symptoms and link to birth defects, the Zika virus is very similar to German measles (rubella), according to history professor Leslie Reagan

The Russian invasion of Ukraine directly challenges the security order established by the Western democracies after World War II, said Edward A. Kolodziej, Emeritus Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert in international relations and global politics.

An Oct. 29 webinar that has drawn a huge response will explore the Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s collection with many materials related to European witchcraft, including an account of the 1612 Lancashire witch trials in England.

A historian looks at the Vietnam War herbicide Agent Orange and how it changed ideas about war wounds and the cause of birth defects.

The changes in the past year in the use of Native American imagery in sports and elsewhere have been unprecedented, said Jay Rosenstein, a Center for Advanced Study professor of media and cinema studies.

At least one familiar brand is being retired and others are getting a rethink due to their use of Black images. Illinois advertising professor Jason Chambers explains why.

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.

There’s a long history of scapegoating marginalized people in epidemics, and of seeing difference in the way those of different races respond to disease, says Rana Hogarth, a U. of I. professor who studies the history of both medicine and race, and the connections between.

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. - Although comics have been published in newspapers since the 1890s, they still get no respect from some teachers and librarians, despite their current popularity among adults. But according to a University of Illinois expert in children's literature, critics should stop tugging on Superman's cape and start giving him and his superhero friends their due.

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.

Six University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty members have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2018. It is the third year in the last four that the Urbana campus has garnered more fellowship awards than any other single institution.

Robert Rushing, an Illinois professor of comparative and world literature

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Hold on to your bearskin hats and your macramé snoods, readers: You are in for a wild verbal ride through your deep, deep past.

Pandemics have changed our physical spaces throughout history, but changes made as a result of COVID-19 may not be long-lasting, says Illinois architecture professor Benjamin Bross.

Mention traditional marriage and family and it’s easy to think you’re talking about age-old customs. Those “traditional” ideals and practices, however, are more likely a product of the last two centuries, says a University of Illinois history professor.

Lynne M. Thomas, who earned her master’s degree in library and information sciences at the University of Illinois, has been selected as the new head of the U. of I. Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

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.

Illinois professors Janice N. Harrington, English, and David Sepkoski, history, received 2020 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships.