February 2018

Events

In the News & Achievements
Iowa City Archives Crawl
Learn more about treasures "hidden" in local archives and libraries

Four sites. Dozens of libraries, museums, and other organizations. At each site, visitors can guess the use and origin of mystery objects, listen to short talks by experts, participate in demonstrations, and go behind the scenes.  

Anyone can participate in this free event, Saturday, February 24, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Just start your crawl at any of the four sites below, where you can pick up a passport and a map. During the final hour, prizes will be given to those with full passports at MERGE (on the ped mall), where historic films will be shown. A schedule of events is evolving here.
The Archeology of Ten Minutes Ago
Backpacks from border crossing provide backdrop for Against Amnesia poster

Across campus and the community, we hope you'll take note of the poster for our upcoming symposium, Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice. We sought a powerful image to anchor our communications for this event, one that captures the urgency and importance of archiving in today's political climate, especially in the name of human rights. An image of living, breathing archives--uncomfortable, incriminating, and at risk of erasure. We found our image from University of Michigan professor Jason De Le รณn's Undocumented Migration Project, which collects and archives items found in the  Sonoran Desert, lost or discarded by undocumented migrants as they near the border: water bottles, toiletries, shoes, dentures, diapers, birth certificates, family photos, wallets, rosaries. And backpacks.
Call for Sawyer Seminar Applications 
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation invites UI to submit seminar proposal

Provost Curry is pleased  to announce the  University of Iowa's  invitation from the  Andrew W. Mellon  Foundation to submit a  proposal for the John E.  Sawyer Seminars
program.  The Mellon Foundation's Sawyer Seminars  bring together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral  fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields mainly, but not exclusively, in the  arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences, for intensive study of a topic proposed by one or more faculty members on campus . This program aims to engage productive scholars in multi-disciplinary  and comparative inquiry that would, in ordinary university circumstances, be difficult to  pursue . The maximum grant award for each Sawyer seminar  is $225,000, which includes funding for a postdoctoral fellow. In 2016-17, the University of Iowa was awarded a Sawyer Seminar, Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Pre-Modern Eurasia.

The Office of the Vice President for Research & Economic Development, in partnership  with the Obermann Center and the College of Liberal Arts &  Sciences, has established a process for identifying the proposal that will go forward from  the University of Iowa. Information sessions will be held Tuesday, January 30, 1:30 in 2670 UCC, and Thursday, February 1, 1:00 in 2670 UCC.
An "Interesting" Discovery in Special Collections
Lena Hill describes archival research at UI Libraries

As part of our upcoming symposium,  Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice, we are profiling scholars describing moments of archival discovery. Lena Hill (English and African American Studies, CLAS) describes a surprising photo that she discovered while sifting through UI Theatre playbills and theses as part of the preparation for the book  Invisible Hawkeyes, which she edited with her husband, Michael Hill. 
Unraveling & Mending: Art as Political Witness 
Obermann Conversation features Hancher guest artist and local playwright

Amir ElSaffar (jazz musician and Hancher guest artist) and Lisa Schlesinger (Theatre, CLAS) will share their journeys as artist-activists whose work interprets strife and crisis for audiences that may feel removed from such global events. What tools do artists have to elucidate violence and injustice that might feel distant or even unimportant to some audiences? What can musicians, theater makers, and other artists add to conversations that might otherwise be relegated to politicians?

Join us Feb. 6, 4:00-5:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library for this event, which will also be recorded as a Hancher Presents podcast. 

Digital Bridges Features Michael Gavin
Digital Humanist will lecture and give workshops

Digital Bridges, the Obermann Center, and the Digital Research and Publishing Studio welcome University of South Carolina professor Michael Gavin to campus for three events February 22-23. 
Coming Up...
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From Our Archives 
Diverse Voices Write to Change the World

As we look toward next week's lunchtime workshop on op-eds, we share this 2015 overview of the OpEd Project workshop held at the UI. 

Women represent almost 50 percent of the world's population.  Why is it, then, that the range of voices heard in the world is incredibly narrow and comes from a tiny sliver of the population: mostly western, older, privileged, and overwhelmingly (85 percent!) male?

UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Director Teresa Mangum wants to get more diverse voices, especially women's voices, out in the world.  So, when she learned about The Op-Ed Project, she wanted to bring it to the UI campus.