Events & Deadlines
Sept. 6 - DEADLINE to apply for 2021–22 Humanities Without Walls Seed Grants
Oct. 1 - Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis | REGISTER
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This issue:
Events & Deadlines
Welcome
Join a Working Group
Seeing Asian American Life through the Video Essay
Fall Obermann Conversations
Obermann Humanities 3MT Registration Open
Training Librarians to Preserve Community Memory
News & Achievements
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Dear Colleagues and Friends,
This past year, reframing the familiar became a daily practice. Reframing can cast stubborn problems into sharp relief and reveal pathways to breathtaking insights, groundbreaking research and learning, and communities as committed to inclusiveness and equity as to discovery and invention. On our website and in many of our publications, you see a street view of the Obermann Center. This prospect from the back lawn (above) is a reminder that reframing can also be a source of inspiration, even joy. We hope your vista of the coming year includes the opportunities and programs you’ll find on our website and in our newsletters. The Obermann staff members and I look forward to seeing many of you soon, whether online or in person. The intellectual community you create each year has proven a strong enough foundation to serve hundreds of faculty, staff, and graduate students for over 40 years—whatever your frame of reference.
With warmest good wishes,
Teresa Mangum
Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
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Join an Obermann Working Group |
This year, the Obermann Center is hosting 28 Working Groups, the largest number of groups to date. We sense that people are hungry for connection and deep conversation, as well as for cross-disciplinary approaches to current issues—all of which are hallmarks of this program.
Groups welcome new members, and the beginning of the year is the best time to join, as the agenda and tone for the coming months is being established. We invite you to peruse this year's groups, which include "Teaching with Writing," "Social Intervention Photography," "Jewish Studies," and "Chinese Humanities and Arts," to name just a few. You'll find the directors' names listed, to whom you can reach out to ask about attending an early meeting and learning more.
These groups serve multiple purposes for the faculty, graduate students, staff, and community members who belong to them—not the least of which is providing a sense of belonging itself. Serving as writing groups, providing space to co-write articles and grants, and moving forward ideas for new programs or events are a few others. Again, we invite you to discover this program and its wonderful participants!
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Seeing Asian American Life through the Video Essay |
As each of us ponders how to live and work in the face of growing challenges—from pandemics to racist violence to climate change—scholars and artists are reconsidering their research questions, expanding methodologies, and devising forms for varied audiences. This year the Obermann Center is hosting a series of informal conversations on research. Artists, scholars, social scientists, and scientists will explore what, in this moment, research can be and can do.
We appreciate the invitation from Professor Hyaeweol Choi and the Korean Studies Research Network in inviting filmmaker, critic, and video essayist Kevin B. Lee to share recent work. In this innovative form, Lee illuminates Asian American experience by juxtaposing personal history, popular culture, and journalistic accounts of violence against Asian Americans. Lee will be joined by three scholars who bring their own research interests to the conversation. We asked them to tell us what they find so striking about Lee’s work. We're delighted to collaborate with the Center for Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, as well.
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Talk on Trans Medicine Kicks Off Fall Obermann Conversations |
This year's slate of Obermann Conversations gets underway on September 22. Dr. Katie Imborek, co-founder of the UIHC's LGBTQ health clinic; stef shuster, author of the new book Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender (NYU Press, 2021); and Aiden Bettine, an archivist, scholar, and organizer will discuss the history and future of this field. Register to attend this conversation on Zoom with our partner, the Iowa City Public Library as host.
The next two Conversations are:
- Economic Development as Social Justice, Dec. 2, 7:00-8:00 pm with Travis Krause, Daria Fisher Page, and community partners.
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Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis Registration Open |
The Obermann Center's 2021 Humanities Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) will take place on Friday, October 1, 2021, from 4:00–5:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library (Meeting Room A). Our 3MT is specially designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The challenge is to articulate complex research clearly and concisely to non-specialist audiences in three minutes or fewer. Presented research can be a student’s thesis or PhD work, research related to an internship or other outside project, or research pertaining to a specific class. The only requirement is that it is the student’s research and that it has a humanities focus.
The winner will receive $250 and directly advance to the campus-wide 3MT final on November 12, 2021. There are 15 spots open; register now to claim one!
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Training Librarians to Preserve Community Memory |
Over the past two decades, say Micah Bateman and Lindsay Mattock, recipients of a 2021 Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant, library and information science (LIS) graduate programs have privileged information science, data science, and computer science—at several universities even merging with computer science departments—over human- and community-centered practices central to the mission of library and archival sciences. One such practice involves the management of community memory records—everything from genealogical documents to newspaper archives to oral histories. Bateman and Mattock note that at small and rural libraries, these records often go “unmanaged and underused, and reflect only the narratives of majority or dominant populations” because the librarians working with those collections have been largely neglected by LIS training programs that privilege “big data” paradigms.
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Chuck Connerly (Fellow '16) spoke on Talk of Iowa about his recent book, Green, Fair, and Prosperous.
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John Westefeld ('99 Fellow-in-Residence) received the 2021 Leader in Suicide Awareness and Prevention Award, one of 5 UI Distinguished Alumni Awards presented this year.
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Joyce Tsai (Humanities Symposium '20) was named director of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.
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Jacki Rand (frequent Obermann collaborator) has taken a faculty position at University of Illinois and will serve as tribal liaison/special advisor in the Chancellor's office.
- We wish both Joyce and Jacki all the best and hope to find ways to continue working together across the distances!
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