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December Events
an Obermann Conversation in collaboration with Riverside Theatre's
We're co-sponsoring another
Holiday Dash Fundraiser for the Food Bank with the Public Policy Center, the Crisis Center, and the College of Dentistry. Drop donations off at the Obermann Center and/or head to The Mill Sunday, Dec. 18 3-6 pm, with 3 cans of food or a $5 donation and rock out to Kevin B.F. Burt and HomeBrewed.
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From Top 10 list of items needed:
peanut butter, canned fruit/vegetables, pasta, rice, diapers, toilet paper, laundry detergent.
Spring
Events
We are excited to announce our Spring 2017 Obermann Conversations.
- April TBD,
Social Justice in K-12 Education, with members of the Obermann Working Group of the same name and local teachers.
Sara Goldrick-Rab, author of Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, will speak Feb. 13 at 7 pm at the Iowa City Public Library.
This is part of a series of events on the future of higher ed--co-sponsored by the Obermann Center, the Public Policy Center, and a number of other generous partners.
Goldrick-Rab will also be speaking at the
Inequality Seminar on Feb. 13, 2:00-3:30, W113 Seashore, "Making College Affordable: Adventures in Scholar-Activism." Contact Sarah Bruch for details at sarah-bruch@uiowa.edu
Obermann-Related Spring Courses
Taught by Lisa Heineman (History, CLAS), co-director of the Obermann Humanities Symposium.
HIST:4100
Taught by Digital Bridges/Obermann Post-Doctoral Fellow Matthew Hannah.
SLIS6411
Senior College:
Frankenstein: Monstrous Science and Moral Monsters
Taught by Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum
Tuesdays, Feb. 7-28 12:30-2:30
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Congratulations
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Kathy Lavezzo (English, CLAS) has published a book she worked on as an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence,
The Accommodated Jew: English Antisemitism from Bede to Milton (Cornell University Press, 2016).
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Our Commitment
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies was founded on the belief that what makes colleges and universities invaluable and irreplaceable is that they bring people together for the express purpose of expanding horizons, using research and debate to test assumptions and claims, solving problems, and forming the habit of lifelong learning. At the Center, we try to further that noble mission by supporting collaboration across differences in the purs
uit of knowledge. But collaboration is far harder than most of us want to admit.
Collaboration requires everyone involved to listen with humility and respect to others' points of view. It requires an often uncomfortable willingness to experiment, accept criticism, admit failure, and then try again. When the goal is ultimately to use our art, scholarship, and research to create a world where peace and justice are possible, collaboration requires tough, tolerant conversations in which all involved are more committed to the greater good than to defending individual initial assumptions or ways of working.
Successful collaboration also requires that participants-in our case faculty, staff, students, and community partners-feel welcomed, respected, supported, and heard.
As the director of the Obermann Center, I want to take a moment to affirm publicly that we at the Center challenge ourselves every day to be good collaborators and to facilitate this kind of deep, demanding collaborative art, scholarship, and research. In a moment when many of you in our intellectual community are feeling very vulnerable, even fearful, we want you to know that we will do our best to support you and your work. Our funds are limited and our staff is small, but modest beginnings can lead to real impact. We can help you to launch new Obermann working groups, to find possible collaborators on campus, to plan Obermann conversations.
Surely, the best use of the most precious resources of a university-creativity, understanding, invention, and the free exchange of ideas-is to translate knowledge into wisdom and wisdom into practice.
All of which is to say, to everyone in this community, as we go forward, let us know when we can be advocates for you and your work. We'll try. We'll fail. We'll listen and learn. And then, with your help, we'll try again.
Teresa Mangum, Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
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This Thursday's Obermann Conversation
Changing the Conversation About Mental Health
How can we move from a pathologized model of mental health toward a more holistic one? Radical changes in the ways that we view, treat, and experience everything from depression to schizophrenia are being called for by those who have been stigmatized by labels and long-held attitudes about mental health.
Join us this Thursday, 12/8, at 4pm at Obermann for a conversation using the current Riverside Theatre production of
Every Brilliant Thing as its starting point. Riverside's artistic director Sean Lewis, UI Counseling director Barry Schreier, and a disability studies scholar, Corey Hickner-Johnson, will explore ways in which the terrain around mental health is shifting -- from artistic portrayals to the work of groups like the UI's own
Active Minds.
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2017 Graduate Institute Fellows
The 11th annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy welcomes a competitively selected class of students from across campus. Community and Behavioral Health, Center for the Book, and Communication Studies are several of the programs represented by the 16 Graduate Fellows, who will spend an intensive week in January learning how to weave collaborative, publicly engaged research and teaching into their work.
For a second year, our site visit / public partner is the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm site. An added addition to this year's Institute is $5,000 in grant funds that have been generously made available by the Office of Outreach & Engagement. These funds will support projects that current and former Graduate Institute Fellows develop in collaboration with the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm. Congratulations to our new Fellows!
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Invisible Hawkeyes Lights Up an Obscured Past
New University of Iowa Press Book Edited by Professors Michael and Lena Hill
In October, a series of events drew attention to the long period between the 1930s and the 1960s at the University of Iowa when African Americans were among the school's outstanding artists, athletes, and scholars, but were denied equal access to housing, dining halls, and other areas of campus life. Michael and Lena Hill are professors in the English Department and the Department of African American Studies (and recent Fellows at the Obermann Center). The publication of their new co-edited book about this history, Invisible Hawkeyes, inspired a weeklong series of events including an Obermann forum in which contributors to the book reflected on their years at the University of Iowa.
At that event, President Harreld formally apologized on behalf of the University to Dora Martin Berry, who was elected Miss SUI in 1955, but whose reign was never recognized by the University. Berry is one of many contributors to the book, which examines the collisions "between Iowa's polite midwestern progressivism and African American students' determined ambition."
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