Image of Research Competition

The Image of Research is a multidisciplinary competition celebrating the diversity and breadth of undergraduate student research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All undergraduate students are invited to submit entries consisting of an image and brief text that articulates how the image relates to the research. Entries will be judged by a multidisciplinary panel for:

• Connection between image narrative and research
• Originality
• Visual Impact

Visit www.library.illinois.edu/sc/ugresearch for more information.

Submissions will be accepted from March 12, 2014 – April 10, 2014 :
https://surveys.illinois.edu/sec/1445728

First prize: $300
Second prize: $200
Plus up to two honorable mentions.

• Awards will be presented at the 7th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 17th, 2014 at the Illini Union.
• All images will be professionally printed and displayed at the Undergraduate Research Symposium.
• All images submitted will be included in an online exhibit hosted by the University Library.

The Image of Research at Illinois was inspired by the Image of Research competition at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Image of Research is organized by the Scholarly Commons of the University Library and the Office of Undergraduate Research and is supported by a generous gift to the Scholarly Commons from the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

April 24 Event Celebrates Brooks

Brooks Celebration

To celebrate acquiring the papers of poet and writer Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), the University of Illinois Rare Book & Manuscript Library and numerous campus partners are organizing an evening of poetry, song, and appreciation called: Full of Pepper and Light: Welcoming the Gwendolyn Brooks Papers to the University of Illinois . The event will take place in the newly-renovated Lincoln Hall Theater (702 South Wright Street, Urbana) at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, 2014. Admission is free.

The evening’s performances will include poets, scholars, singers, and dancers reading, discussing, and expressing their appreciation for Brooks’s art and inspirational legacy. The production and performance is directed by Interim Head of the Theatre Department Thomas Mitchell.

Brooks was the third Poet Laureate of the State of Illinois (following Carl Sandburg), poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Performers will include the University of Illinois Black Chorus, conducted by Dr. Ollie Watts Davis; Aurora, a troupe led by Brooks’s daughter Nora Brooks Blakely; poets Janice Harrington and Laurence Lieberman; artist Amos Kennedy; local high school students; and Dr. Haki Madhubuti, co-founder and director emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing.

“A special ‘Poetry Bus’ will shuttle audience members between the Champaign Public Library, the Urbana Free Library, and the Douglass Branch Library and campus,” said Rare Book & Manuscript Library Director Valerie Hotchkiss. “This spares folks the parking hassles and will get them in the mood for poetry!”

The celebration begins earlier in the day with a lecture by Dr. Haki Madhubuti entitled, “Gwendolyn Brooks: Beyond the Word Maker, a Black Poet and Activist,” at 4 p.m. in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Full of Pepper and Light is produced and sponsored by the Rare Book & Manuscript Library; the Departments of English, African-American Studies, Religion, Theater, and Music; the University Library; the Office of Public Engagement; and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.

Spanning more than six decades, the Gwendolyn Brooks Papers include some of Brooks’s earliest surviving poetry and prose, as well as scrapbooks and clippings of pieces she published as a young woman in The Chicago Defender . In addition, it contains extensive correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and informal jottings, annotations, and observations. The largest portion of Brooks’s papers documents her career after leaving mainstream commercial publishing to produce her works with small presses and black-owned imprints, including her own imprint, The David Company.

For more information, visit go.library.illinois.edu/brooks .

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).