November 2017
Deadlines
Events

News & Achievements
  • Teresa Mangum, Obermann Center Director, was inducted into the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship for her long-standing commitment to publicly engaged scholarship, teaching, and administration. Read more here!
  • Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Fall 2017 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence (Communication Studies, CLAS), has received the 2017 Book of the Year Award from the National Communication Association for his book, The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation (Temple UP, 2015). Read the announcement.
  • Former Obermann Graduate Fellows Erica Damman, Stefan Schoeberlein, and Katherine Wetzel received Ballard-Seashore scholarships. Our congratulations!
"Colored Conventions and the Long History of Black Activism"
Gabrielle Foreman to give lecture and lead digital humanities workshop

From 1830 until well after the Civil War, free and fugitive Blacks came together in state and national political "Colored Conventions." They strategized about how to achieve educational, labor, and legal justice at a moment when few Black people had basic rights nationally and locally. This movement is now the centerpiece of an ambitious digital humanities topic as well as the focus of a lecture and workshop by one of its founders, Gabrielle Foreman.

By actively involving church congregations, colleges, and high schools, the Colored Conventions Project has uncovered new material and found a bevy of volunteers to transcribe 18th-century minutes, articles, and proceedings. Foreman will share their findings about the conventions in her lecture and provide the tools and methods behind the digital work in a workshop. The project was just named one of 50 NEH Essential Projects. 
Typewriters for Eskimos: Imperialist Rhetoric & Puerto Rico 
Darrel Wanzer-Serrano's book-in-progress examines Congressional rhetoric

In a new project, Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, a Fall 2017 Fellow-in-Residence, wants to see how policymakers' colonialist rhetoric helped to shape a U.S. national identity rooted in the possession of other places. Rhetoric that, he contends, informs the federal government's present-day treatment of Puerto Rico, including its responses to the island's debt and hurricane crises.

Get It Done !
Publish or Perish - the fine art of shopping book proposals

The next in our new series about getting work done efficiently and elegantly,  Publish or Perish features  Ranjit Arab, Senior Acquisitions Editor of the University of Iowa Press, who will share tips on writing a strong book proposal and getting your manuscript in front of editors.

This series will be held in the Obermann Center library and will not be recorded. No reservations are needed. BYO lunch.

Graduate Career Consortium Launches ImaginePhD
F ree, online career exploration and planning tool for grad students in the humanities and social sciences  

The Graduate Career Consortium has launched  ImaginePhD, a free, online career exploration and planning tool for PhD students and postdoctoral scholars in the humanities and social sciences. The tool  helps users clarify what matters to them in a career, connect with specific career options that meet their needs, and find resources for researching those options in depth.  Jen Teitle, Assistant Dean for Graduate Development and Postdoctoral Affairs at the University of Iowa Graduate College, contributed to the project. 

Spring Courses on Archives
Courses for undergraduate and graduate students offered in connection with symposium, " Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice"
 
Undergraduate course
 
Kelsey McGinnis will teach a short course on Tuesdays at 2:00-3:50 between 2/27-4/17. Students will visit campus archives for hands-on exploration of the UI's many treasures.
 
Graduate courses
 
GRAD:7280 Obermann Center Special Topics Seminar: Archives, Power, and Social Justice
This short course taught by Dr. Beth Yale of the History Department and Center for the Book is designed to prepare graduate students from any discipline who plan to attend the 2018 Obermann Humanities Symposium. The class will offer a cross-disciplinary introduction to current discussions of archives, archival practices, and archival thinking. The class will meet four times for 90 minutes before the conference and one time for 90 minutes afterward. Because the symposium itself is the heart of the course, attendance at the March 1-3, 2018 symposium is required.  Off-cycle meeting times: 5:00pm-6:30pm on the following dates: 2/1, 2/8, 2/15, 2/22, 3/8. 
 
Cinematic Arts Professor Paula Amad's seminar surveys the history and theory of archiving across print and audiovisual technologies, then focuses on the challenges to archiving in the age of digital media. Students will investigate the impact of digital archives across media, disciplines, archiving practices, and current debates, including the rise of the digital humanities, new media theory, philosophy of memory, copyright battles, ethics, and access. The class will be taught Tuesday/Thursday, 12:30-1:45.

Thanks for sharing these with students who might be interested!
Coming Up...
   From Our Archives (2015)



The second most common neurodegenerative disease is Parkinson's Disease (PD). It affects more than 1 million Americans and 10 million people worldwide. The cause of this prevalent disease remains largely unknown. Genetics play a role but cannot account for all cases. While age is one contributor, it isn't clear whether Parkinson's comes with age or simply takes that long to advance and for symptoms to appear.

Increasingly, many researchers believe that environmental factors, including exposure to pesticides and other toxins, may play a significant role. UI Pharmacy professor and recent Obermann Fellow-in-Residence Jon Doorn has spent the past decade on the trail of Parkinson's biomarkers, seeking clues to Parkinson's causes to be able to find drugs to stop the disease and diagnose earlier.