Events & Deadlines
The following events are either sponsored or co-sponsored by the Obermann Center or highlight work close to that of our mission.
Nov. 3, 4, & 12 - Virtual National Humanities Conference (see below)
And from our friends at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois-Chicago & the University of Illinois Press:
From 4:00-4:50, in the session Beyond the Monograph, faculty members will discuss new ways to amplify academic work. From 5:00-5:50, marketing staff from Notre Dame, Cornell, and Duke University Presses will explain how authors can work with marketing professionals, using new platforms to reach broader audiences.
|
|
This issue:
Events & Deadlines
Fellow-in-Residence Margaret Beck
Spelman-Rockefeller Community Scholar Hannah Baysinger
What Do We Mean By Research Now?: 10/29 Event to Feature National Foundation Leaders
2021 Virtual National Humanities Conference
News & Achievements
Featured Video
|
|
Searching for Red with
Margaret Beck, Fall '21 Fellow in Residence
|
An anthropological archaeologist, Margaret Beck is continually searching—sometimes physically, for artifacts or geological samples, but always intellectually—to understand how people once lived, how they prepared and served food, taught and learned craftwork, used local resources, moved within their landscapes, and spread their traditions. Currently, she’s studying red-painted archeological ceramics and iron-rich geological samples to discover how Native peoples created and applied the color red in the central United States. The answers aren't always easy to find centuries later.
"Throughout Native North America," says Beck, Associate Professor of Anthropology and a Fall 2021 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, "red is a powerful, strong, and often sacred color.” Indigenous people in the Midwest and Great Plains used red paint for daily grooming, to ornament household objects, and to make the mundane sacred in religious ceremonies. When Beck moved to Iowa in 2007 and began looking at archeological ceramics from Iowa and Illinois, she noticed that their red pigments differed from those found in archeological sites elsewhere in North America.
|
|
Meet Hannah Baysinger, Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar |
Hannah Baysinger had forty-eight hours to leave Paraguay. She had been in the South American country as a Peace Corps volunteer for just six months when the pandemic forced her and other volunteers to leave at the end of March 2020. “I was on the last commercial flight out of Paraguay, and one of the last out of South America,” says Baysinger of the sudden departure she made from a place she intended to call home for two years.
The unexpected evacuation forced the recent college graduate to figure out what she would do next. Last January, she entered the UI College of Education's MAT program in Spanish and ELL. This year, Baysinger is working with local nonprofit Open Heartland as the 2021-22 Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar. The position, which was started last year in response to community needs during the pandemic, puts a UI graduate student in a quarter-time position with a local nonprofit that serves the well-being of children and families. It is funded via money originally donated to the University in 1929 via the philanthropist Laura Spelman Rockefeller to establish “child study” centers at several major universities.
|
|
10/29: What Do We Mean By Research Now? Perspectives from National Foundations & the Researchers They Support |
In this second installation in our series about the current state of research, we have invited both national leaders of funding bodies and impressive recipients to talk about issues of evaluation, as well as what gets funded and why. In this virtual roundtable on Friday, 10/29, we'll learn about exciting new approaches to assessment rooted in values and institutional mission; publicly engaged and even embedded scholars; social and racial justice research; digital projects and collaborations; and more.
Our speakers:
-
John Paul Christy, Senior Director of Fellowships and Public Programs at the American Council of Learned Societies
-
Kim Gallon, Associate Professor of History, African American Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Purdue University
-
Christopher Long, Foundation Professor, Dean of the College of Arts & Letters; Dean of the MSU Honors College; Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University; P.I., Humane Metrics
-
Jason Rhody, Program Director for Digital Culture, the Social Data Initiative, the Media and Democracy program, and the Research and Dissertation Fellowship program, Social Science Research Council
|
-
Katrina Sanders (IDRG '21) was awarded the May Brodbeck Humanities Fellowship in support of her work to establish the College of Education Social Justice Institute.
-
Venise Berry (Humanities Symposium '21-'22) received the Michael J. Brody Award for Faculty Faculty Excellence in Service.
-
Chuy Renteria (HPG, '20-'21) has published his first book, We Heard It When We Were Young (UI Press, November '21).
-
Hao Zhou (Grad Institute '21) won a Gold Medal from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the 2021 Student Academy Award for their film Frozen Out. This is the first Gold Medal ever given to a student artist based at the University of Iowa.
-
Will Rhodes (English), Thalassa Raasch (Art & Art History), and Louise Seamster (Sociology & Criminology and African American Studies) have been awarded Obermann/OVPR Book Ends awards.
|
|
Graduate Students & Faculty Eligible for Free Admission to National Humanities Conference |
This year's National Humanities Conference will take place online, November 3, 4, and 12. Thanks to generous funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Obermann Center can cover the $50 admission fee for up to 10 attendees.
If you'd like to attend, please
This annual conference brings together representatives from colleges, universities, state and jurisdictional humanities councils, cultural institutions, and other community-based organizations to explore approaches to deepening the public’s engagement with the humanities. This year's program will feature a wide range of sessions that specifically invite us to think about diversity, equity, inclusion, and access across the public humanities work we do, inside and outside our organizations.
Moved online in lieu of an intended place-based conference in Detroit, the schedule offers multiple topics specific to that city, including a panel of scholars who worked with legendary activist Grace Lee Boggs: adrienne maree brown, Adam Bush, Barbara Ransby, and Lisa Yun Lee, and a talk about the Detroit River International Freedom Curriculum that asks how curricula about the Underground Railroad can be "living stories." There are also multiple sessions that have a skill-building focus, including those about oral history, grant programs, and assessment.
|
Featured Video:
Trans Health & Medical Care Obermann Conversation (9/22)
|
Surfacing in the mid-twentieth century yet shrouded in social stigma, transgender medicine is now a rapidly growing medical field. In this virtual Obermann Conversation, UI alum and Michigan State University professor stef shuster shared findings from their new book, Trans Medicine (NYU Press, 2021) in discussion with Dr. Katie Imborek, co-founder of UIHC's LGBTQ Clinic. Recorded September 22, 2021.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
