Humanities News

An ancient Egyptian mummy has had quite an afterlife, traveling more than 6,000 miles, spending six decades in private hands, and finally, in 1989, finding a home at the World Heritage Museum (now the Spurlock Museum) at the University of Illinois. The mummys travels did not end there, however. It has made two trips to a local hospital once in 1990 and again this year for some not-so-routine medical exams.

The Return of the Mummy: New Imaging Results on the Spurlock Museums Egyptian Mummy will be the most thorough public presentation yet of the many types of evidence collected in 1990 and again in 2011. The symposium will begin at 4 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium of the museum at 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana.

The Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois will explore the impact of indigenous poetry on the expressive cultures of the Western Hemisphere with a poetry reading featuring Ins Hernndez-Avila and Heid Erdrich on Tuesday (Sept. 13).

An author described by The New York Times Book Review as a writer for all readers will open the annual Carr Reading Series. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith who earned his doctorate at the U. of I. in 1969 and is the Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas in Austin is best known for Klail City Death Trip, which tells the stories of the residents of a fictional Lower Rio Grande Valley county in a series that so far numbers 15 volumes.

Luminarium a novel by University of Illinois creative writing professor Alex Shakar already is garnering glowing reviews. It will be released Tuesday (Aug. 23).