2026-03-04
- Three members of the Department of English have earned faculty and graduate student fellowships from the Humanities Research Institute for 2026–27. This year’s research theme is “Up Against Erasure.” Kimberly Mack earned a faculty...
2026-03-03 - Citizens and writers remain hopeful in the face of environmental harms in “Reading Better States: Utopian Method and Environmental Harm in the Global South,” the new book by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign English professor Rebecca Oh.Oh said...
2026-02-24 - English alumna Connie Frank has been named the 2026 College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Humanitarian Award winner. The College of LAS will recognize Frank and the other six award recipients during this year's alumni awards celebration in April. This year's honorees are researchers, philanthropists, and political thinkers who have made incredible impacts in their fields and...
2026-02-24 - A multi-disciplinary team of faculty researchers from the University of Illinois has been awarded a Sawyer Seminar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study the challenges to democracy and academic freedom confronting US universities now. This is the first time in the 30-year history of the Sawyer Seminar Program that Illinois faculty have won this prestigious humanities award....
2026-02-19 - Illinois English professor and author David Wright Faladé was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. The honor society, whose members include MacArthur Fellows and Pulitzer Prize winners, was founded in 1936 to celebrate Texan literature and recognize exceptional literary achievement, according to the institute....
2026-02-18 - Four members of the Department of English have been selected by the College of LAS as the recipients of this year’s teaching and advising awards. Instructors Barry Hudek, Cassidy Short, and Corey Van Landingham, and academic advisor Anna Ivy were among 19 professors, graduate students, lecturers, and advisors to earn the awards. In addition to the college awards, Van Landingham and Short...
2026-01-30 - Poet Ángel García examines his disrupted family lineage in his new collection of poetry, seeking answers about where he came from and trying to fill the many gaps in his family’s story.“Indifferent Cities” is the second book by García,...
2025-12-19 - This week marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth — she was born Dec. 16, 1775 — and fans of her novels have been celebrating with tea parties, brunches, and balls. Her novels — including “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma” — enjoy immense popularity. They are the subject of numerous academic studies and TV and film adaptations....
2025-12-12 - Kristi McDuffie has earned an LAS Academic Professional Award. McDuffie was among eight staff members and academic professionals to be honored by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences for outstanding professional contributions. The awardees will be celebrated at a ceremony in Spring 2026. As director of rhetoric in the Department of English...
2025-11-04 - The voyage of the HMS Challenger in the 1870s was a sprawling 3-1/2-year expedition to explore the world’s oceans. The scientists aboard the vessel collected 100,000 specimens of sea creatures, discovered 5,000 new species, mapped the ocean floors and took hundreds of measurements of sea temperature and chemistry that formed the basis of the discipline of oceanography. The data collected by the...
2025-11-03 - David Wright Faladé examines race, class, and gender through the eyes of a young college woman spending time in her small Texas hometown in his new short story, “Amarillo Boulevard,” which was published in the Oct. 6 issue...
2025-10-30 - Illinois English professor Shawn Gilmore was recently featured on Slate's Decoder Ring podcast. The podcast episode explores the origins of a familiar visual trope in thrillers, mysteries, and crime dramas: a board covered in photos, newspaper clippings, and other documents — all connected by string.These boards are...
2025-10-05 - Rob Kanter believed the best education didn’t happen within four walls. Even when he stood in front of a classroom, he focused on the world beyond it.For more than a decade, Kanter (PhD, '99, English) guided students not only through course readings but across landscapes—from the tropical rainforests of Central America to the prairies and forests of Central Illinois—using his deep curiosity and...-
2025-10-01 - David Wright Faladé, professor of creative writing in the Department of English, was recently published in The New Yorker. His short story, “Amarillo Boulevard,” illustrates the complexities of identity as the story’s...
2025-08-29 - English and African American studies professor Irvin Hunt thought twice before he answered a phone call from an unknown caller, but little did he know that it was about to change everything. It came from film director Kahlil Joseph, asking Hunt if he would be interested in writing a script for his newest film...