Illinois Featured Content

The dance department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is celebrating the work of its Black faculty members and guest artists this season through the theme “Black on Black: A Celebration of Black Dance.”

World War II became a global war in 1942, with all the world powers involved, and with conflicts on the home front over struggles for independence and racial justice. U. of I. history professor Peter Fritzsche writes about the year of 'war without end.' 

The artwork of printmaker Emmy Lingscheit, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign art professor, examines human entanglements with the environment, deep time and how social justice and ecological justice are intertwined.

Roseanne Cash, Jeff Tweedy, Samantha Fish, Gary Clark Jr., Daniel Casares, Bertha: Grateful Drag (a drag tribute to the Grateful Dead), Herbie Hancock, Sunny Jain, Ravi Coltrane and Terence Blanchard, Rhiannon Giddens, and MORE 

The annual School of Art and Design MFA Exhibition  runs through April 26. It includes 12 graduate students in studio art, industrial design and Design for Responsible Innovation. The work is the culmination of their graduate education. 

History professor emeritus John A. Lynn examines surrender and the treatment of prisoners of war as an ever-evolving aspect of war that reflects and defines the nature of society, culture, and conflict. 

English professor Janice Harrington draws on her love of the prairie and her interest in Black history in the Midwest to examine how people create a sense of place in her new book of poetry, 'Yard Show.'

Critical race theory is often misunderstood. In her new book, 'The Origins of Critical Race Theory: The People and Ideas that Created a Movement,' professor Aja Martinez explains what it is and how it was founded.

A new collection of essays asks what histories of empire look like when the species supremacy of humans is questioned rather than assumed. A Q+A with Antoinette Burton, a Swanlund Endowed Chair of History at Illinois.

Professor Robert Dale Parker examines how literature and poetry of the 1930s express the hopelessness of extreme poverty and the stagnation of time in his new book, 'The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression.'

The characters in 'The New Internationals' — a young French woman who has survived the Holocaust, a university student from West Africa and a Black soldier — are based on David Wright Faladé’s parents. 

Several homes designed by local architects between the 1940s and 1990s were also made as settings for artistic performances. See how four midcentury modern homes served as incubators for avant-garde culture. 

History professor Robert Morrissey traveled with members of the Miami and Peoria Nations to a Paris museum to see four ceremonial robes created more than 300 years ago by Native American tribes in Illinois. 

'In 2009, a cult phenomenon was born when Scott Budnick, Todd Phillips and the entire team involved with The Hangover unveiled this offbeat comedy classic,' said Chaz Ebert, co-founder and producer of Ebertfest. 

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts has served as a unique and vibrant home for impactful and thought-provoking performing arts events for over five decades. We asked Krannert Center patrons, what were your favorite performances? 

History professor Marc Hertzman examines the longest-lasting society formed by people who escaped slavery and their descendants in Brazil and how its memory shapes concepts of Black resistance and national identity today.

International Education Week  at the Illinois aims to raise awareness about the breadth of international education activities and resources available in our community. 

'When we are investing in purchasing works of art or taking in a large collection, we always have a sense of how the works of art can expand or change what we’re already doing,' said KAM director Jon Seydl. 

The season opener is 'No Puedo, I’m Sorry,' produced as part of the Daniel J. Sullivan Playwright-in-Residence program, which provides support for an emerging playwright to develop a work. 

John J. Bird was appointed the first Black trustee for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1873. Illinois emeritus professor of religion Wayne Pitard wrote a new book about Bird and his advocacy. 

Rachel McMillian, a professor of curriculum and instruction at U. of I., said such initiatives better prepare pre-service teachers to understand students who are affected by incarceration in some way. 

'I was blown away by this experience, and it was a moment of clarity for me in how my understanding of music could influence my understanding of engineering and vice versa,' graduate student Jess Mingee said.  

Popular music is associated with youth, newness and originality. Yet such music has a deep relationship with the past through sampling, covers and commemorative reissues of decades-old recordings...

Poet and Illinois English professor Corey Van Landingham writes about new marriage, its conventions and how it can both shrink and expand one’s world in her new collection of poems, 'Reader, I.'

KCPA will feature a wide variety of performers for its 2024-25 season, including jazz and classical artists,  Broadway and opera legends, an indie rock band, and a performance that combines genetics with a cocktail party. 

Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, running April 17-20, 2024, at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign, will kick off with an opening night screening of Bob Fosse’s film Star 80 with stars Eric Roberts and Mariel Hemingway in attendance. 

The world of competitive long-distance running took off in the 1970s. But stories of the sport’s Black architects and pioneers who laid its foundation have been largely untold for decades.  

A group of nerds playing air guitar competes in bars across the country, seeking the pinnacle of self-expression that the competitors call 'airness.' 'This play is crammed with rock and roll. The play is fast and funny and loud. It’s so much fun.' 

Krannert Art Museum hosts the first solo exhibition for artist Jen Everett, whose work explores themes of Black life, family, responses to turmoil and Everett’s identity as a queer Black woman. 'Could you dim the lights?' opens Feb. 1. 

During the month of February, discover a range of events that celebrate Black History Month and give everyone in our community a chance to participate.

Illinois Soul will be broadcast on WILL-FM 101.1 and available to stream live at illinoissoul.org. 'We are so excited to launch Illinois Soul, bringing the best in jazz, R&B, and gospel to our listeners, with a unique focus on the Black community.'

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 literature professor David Cooper.

'Ebertfest was created for people who love movies as much as Roger loved movies,' Chaz Ebert said. 'We want audience members and special guests to feel like they are a part of a family as we reach this important milestone...' 

Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis will perform with his quartet at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets for the spring season went on sale online Nov. 15.

'My research shifts African and African Atlantic (art) histories from their stereotypical focus on trade goods and sacred relics... toward property and real estate: specifically, the ancestral stone houses of the Gold Coast,' says researcher Hermann von Hesse

International Education Week (IEW) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign returns Nov. 5 with several events honoring the positive impact of international education in the community. 

The Maya built and maintained self-cleaning reservoirs that served urban populations over millennia. U. of I. anthropology professor Lisa Lucero writes that the water-related crises they faced hold lessons for today. 

Cydnee Weber designed an eco-cultural tour to help students appreciate nature and the influence of Indigenous communities. She also saw few opportunities for students to cultivate plants, so she offers ideas on raising greenery on campus. 

The 15-millionth volume in the collection of the University Library is a medieval copy of Walter of Henley’s 13th-century work 'Hosbondrye,' one of the most influential works on agriculture and land management in the Middle Ages. 

History professor Rosalyn LaPier, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis, talks about the history of the bison and their connection to Indigenous people in the new Ken Burns documentary 'The American Buffalo.'

Murals created on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The exhibition in the Illini Union Art Gallery runs from September 7 to September 29.

Marie Watt's work draws on pop culture, mythology and her Native American and European ancestry. It explores themes of storytelling, community building, environmental stewardship and social justice. 

Professor Bobby Smith tells the overlooked story of how food was used as both a weapon and a tool of resistance during the Civil Rights Movement in his new book 'Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.' 

U of I professor Jamie Jones examines the huge energy transition from whale oil to fossil fuels and the continuing influence of the whaling industry in her book 'Rendered Obsolete: The Afterlife of U.S. Whaling in the Petroleum Age.' 

Midwest Living (Aug 3) For the past decade, the U of I's Allerton Park has offered arts and crafts programming at the estate, setting the stage for this fall's launch of 'The Farms: An Allerton Folk School.'

'(The artist) invades urban space with these characters, finding in mosaic tiles the perfect material to replicate the aesthetics of pixels,' Julie Gaillard said. 'These effigies are a symbol for the global upheaval brought about by digital technologies.'

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’ 2023-24 season will begin with the 10th year of ELLNORA: The Guitar Festival, followed by women singer-songwriters, song and dance from Ghana, a Latin Grammy winner, and much more. 

The influence of al-Andalus and the image of it as a tolerant multicultural society are reflected in diverse ways in politics and art today, writes professor Eric Calderwood in his new book, 'On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus.'

Ensemble director Guido Sánchez-Portuguez says he started the ensemble because he wanted a group that was devoted to playing underrepresented types of Latin American music - beyond the salsa or merengue that are most familiar.

As this year marks the 10th anniversary of Roger Ebert’s death, the program reflects his guiding principle of empathy, said Chaz Ebert. The program includes 11 films, two shorts, 20+ guests, and two musical performances: