This is the third summer of the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good internship program. For eight weeks, 10 UI humanities and humanities-adjacent graduate students are working with community non-profits and campus units on projects that include archival organization, data collection and analysis, storytelling, and website development. "I feel like I’ve learned so much over the past few weeks, and I’m excited to see how my newfound knowledge can be put to use," writes Aja Witt (Journalism and Mass Communication), who is working at the Iowa City Area Development group on a project about BIPOC-owned businesses. "One thing that I’m finding is that I really enjoy community-based, or ‘boots on the ground’-type learning much more than the traditional classroom setting." 

Al Martin (Communication Studies) and Andrew Owens (Cinematic Arts) are working together this month on two chapters of their book—a critical study of Marlon Riggs’s groundbreaking film Tongues Untied (1989). Via an Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant, the two are furthering their project, which centers the film within the broader social and cultural politics of 1990s America. "Little consideration has been given to the social, cultural, reception, and production contexts of the film," they write. Martin and Owens are centering Black queerness within American LGBTQ+media scholarship. Their project is under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press as part of its “Queer Film Classics” series.

In late summer 2020, a new community initiative was formed in response to the impact of the pandemic on K12 students: Neighborhood NESTS. The Obermann Center responded by creating a new graduate research position, the Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar. The Scholar works with the initiative to provide program management and deepen the project through disciplinary research. In this role, School Counseling MA Student Peggy Schwab helped to organize learning hubs. She sees these spaces, including the one at Open Heartland, as excellent locations for research questions, including What impact could NESTS and parental involvement have on the long-term academic and life achievements of the students and families involved?