Humanities News

Parents considering enrolling their young children in after-school piano lessons, ballet classes, gymnastics or martial arts now have another option for enriching their future a Spanish language course. Taught by native or near-native Spanish speakers, the curriculum presents Spanish to children ages 4 through 8 using games, crafts, stories and songs.

A large-scale project designed to bring old and often obscure books into the digital age has yielded a surprising bonus at University of Illinois: Not only will the text of the books become fully searchable online, but the original versions the old-fashioned kind a reader can hold are being rescued from the library stacks, repaired and preserved.

A new research center created by the University of Illinois and Indiana University, along with HathiTrust Digital Repository, will develop software to foster computer access to the growing digital record of knowledge.

Many parents enroll their young children in piano lessons, ballet class, gymnastics or martial arts, figuring that getting a jump-start on these skills will serve their children later in life. Silvina Montrul suggests that parents consider another option a foreign language course.

John L. Esposito, the author of more than 30 books on the politics of Islam, will speak on The Future of Islam and Muslim-West Relations at the annual Marjorie Hall Thulin Lecture in Religion at the University of Illinois.