September 2017
Deadlines
Events

News & Achievements
  • The Latina/o Midwest Reader was published this summer by University of Illinois Press. Congratulations to editors Claire Fox (English and Spanish & Portuguese) and former UI faculty Omar Valerio-Jiménez and Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, who developed the project during their 2013 Obermann Summer Seminar.
  • Two authors from our Humanities and Public Life series were recognized. Anne Basting was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship just after the publication of The Penelope Project: An Arts-Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care. (The co-editors are Ellie Rose and Maureen Towey). And Ruth Sergel received the 2017 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for See You in the Streets: Art, Action, and Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
What a Year!
2016-17 Obermann Center Annual Report celebrates your work! 

From our series about the future of public higher education to the yearlong Mellon Sawyer Seminar that brought leading scholars and artists from around the world to talk about the earliest iterations of the manuscript, 2016-17 was a rich year at the Obermann Center. Find your own contributions, read about friends' work, and consider how you can join our community this year.  
Incarcerate. Educate. Integrate.  
Prisoner access to education focus of September conference and new speaker series

A new speaker series that starts this month will introduce inmates at the  Iowa Medical & Classification Center ("Oakdale") in Coralville, IA, to college-level learning. Kat Litchfield, former Obermann Graduate Institute Fellow and a PhD candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture, hopes the series will evolve into a credit-earning program. A Sept. 8-9 conference, The Role of Transformative Education in Successful Reentry, will bring leaders of college-in-prison programs to campus to share other models.
Obermann Conversations 
Trees and emotions topic of first in campus-community series

We could all use more good conversations in our lives. Enjoy these opportunities to hear campus and community leaders talk about relevant, meaty, and oftentimes unexpected issues that affect us all. 
  • Your Brain on Trees. How trees and nature affect our emotional well-being. Sept. 19, 4:00-5:00 pm, UI Pentacrest. Meet on the front stairs of Old Capitol for a walking conversation. 
  • Algorithms: The Personal Is Political. How do algorithms, seemingly simple sets of rules, have so much sway over our day-to-day lives, including the news we receive and the people with whom we come into contact digitally? Oct. 18, 4-5 pm, MERGE on the Ped Mall. 
  • Collective Action. What are the tensions between individual autonomy and communal organization? Must we be the same, or can we maintain our diversity and difference and still act collectively to improve circumstances for ourselves or for the whole community? Nov. 14, 4-5 pm, Iowa City Public Library.
Fall 2017 Obermann Fellows
Eight scholars focus on books, articles, grants, and more

Help us to welcome the six scholars who are working at the Center this fall, and two who will be working with us as non-resident fellows:
  • Blaine Greteman, English, CLAS
  • Naomi Greyser, Rhetoric and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies, CLAS
  • Matthew Hannah, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Digital Bridges
  • Sarah Kyle, Humanities & Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma
  • Kim Marra, Theatre Arts and American Studies, CLAS
  • Jessica Welburn Paige, Sociology and African American Studies, CLAS
  • Mirzam Pérez, Mellon Digital Bridges Fellow, Spanish Literature, Grinnell College
  • Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Communication Studies and Latina/o Studies, CLAS
Obermann  Working Groups 
Now open to new members

The Obermann Center's Working Group program provides nominal funds and access to our meeting spaces for groups to meet around a shared issue over the course of the year. Usually interdisciplinary, groups include faculty, graduate students, staff, and community members. Topics range from performance studies to algorithms and social media to using Photovoice with Latinx high school students.

If you would like to join one of the groups-- see a full list--contact its director to inquire if they are accepting new members. 
Coming Up...
   From Our Archives (2014)



"...They realized that there was an entire community of like-minded scholars dedicated to developing research and collaborations with prisons. And they knew that a lot could be accomplished if this interdisciplinary network was organized and made public. Thus was born the UI Prison Projects Coalition and the upcoming symposium, Incarcerated in Iowa.
 
[Kathrina] Litchfield was further energized by a meeting she had with John Baldwin, Director of the Iowa Department of Corrections, in which he had made clear the Department's desire to partner with the scholarly community. Litchfield had a hunch there was more going on than was readily apparent, and she wanted to showcase it, while also bringing scholars and corrections personnel together to collaboratively figure out what else was needed."