2026-04-15 - Rebecca Oh has been named an honorable mention for the 2025-2026 HRI Research Prize for her article "Apocalyptic Realism: Death and Life Amid Nuclear Infrastructures" in the journal Environmental Humanities. In this article, Oh, an environmental humanities scholar, examines Idrissou Mora-Kpai’s documentary "Arlit,...
2026-04-15 - At a calm trot, a horse’s hooves leave divots in the pale, rocky dirt. Under a brilliantly blue Arizona sky, one may wonder where the “tornado” from this artwork's title comes in. Then, the horse picks up speed, kicking up dust and pebbles in a chaotic storm. Some photos are entirely a blur. When the horse gallops through an amber creek, crystalline water droplets resemble a chandelier exploding...
2026-04-14 - English professor Christopher Kempf has been awarded a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship.Kempf was one of two Illinois professors to earn the fellowship, and among 223 individuals working across 55 disciplines chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from nearly 5,000 applicants,...
2026-03-10 - A new project led by a team of researchers from four universities aims to create and evaluate language models that represent past historical periods. The project, "Artificial Intelligence for Cultural and Historical Reasoning...
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...