Events & Deadlines
The following events are either sponsored or co-sponsored by the Obermann Center or highlight work close to that of our mission. For the summer, we are also featuring events from some of our partners.
This Summer
Various - Write ON - a UI Writing Center program
Fall
|
|
This issue:
Events & Deadlines
OVPR Community Engaged Scholars
This Summer at Obermann: Structural Determinants of Adolescent Mental Health
This Summer at Obermann: Abundant Ecologies Collaborative
Revisit 2021-22 Obermann Conversations
New Approach to Obermann Humanities Symposium
Achievements & Recognition
|
|
Invitations for Proposals
Seeding Excellence: OVPR Community Engaged Scholars
Due: July 1
|
The Research Development Office (RDO) and the Obermann Center seek proposals for one-year OVPR Community Engaged Scholars (Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences [AHSS]) proposals. Pairs of UI faculty and community partners can apply for grants of up to $5,000 to support projects in which a UI faculty member and a community partner collaborate on a publicly engaged, research-based project in the arts, humanities, or social sciences. The goal is for these teams to find productive approaches to solving problems the faculty and partner both deem significant.
Teams will address research questions of value to the faculty member’s discipline(s) while also offering concrete benefit to the public partner’s community. The partners may propose a project that launches a new collaboration or enhances an existing collaboration. The work should be completed within a year of receiving the grant award. Applications are due July 1, 2022.
|
|
SUMMER AT OBERMANN
Structural Determinants of Adolescent Mental Health
|
Over three-fourths of all serious mental health disorders in individuals manifest in adolescence and young adulthood, setting the stage for poor achievement, health, and decreased well-being later in life. Mental health disparities by gender, race/ethnicity, and class, which are often shaped by contextual school and neighborhood factors, are also prevalent in adolescence and beyond. With increasing rates of depression and anxiety among adolescents, there is a critical need for interdisciplinary investigations of the structural determinants of adolescent mental health that can highlight the mechanisms through which both school and neighborhood contexts influence health disparities across the life course.
Via an Interdisciplinary Research Grant, Shannon Lea Watkins (Community & Behavioral Health) and Maithreyi Gopalan (Education & Public Policy, Penn State University) are working together this month to estimate the effect of adolescent mental health on young adult health outcomes and tease out school- and neighborhood-level characteristics that explain the accumulation of poor health and well-being over the life course.
|
|
SUMMER AT OBERMANN
Abundant Ecologies Collaborative
|
For their Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant, E Cram (Communication Studies and GWSS) and Constance Gordon (Communication Studies, San Francisco State University) are developing a digital humanities project that identifies, explores, maps relations, and circulates vernaculars of “abundance” at a time of crisis for the humanities and for the planet at large. They are also working toward a co-authored book on the same subject.
In the context of environmental communication, frameworks of abundance name and cultivate environmental relationships that privilege values of reciprocity, care, mutual aid, and interdependence. As one of the most urgent existential crises of the 21st century, climate disaster must be named by humanities scholars as a consequence and process of deepening planetary hierarchies. Abundant Ecologies draws from current research in Queer and Disability Studies, Critical Indigenous Studies, critical environmental justice studies, and related areas of situated sustainability and critical place inquiry. As is often true of IDRG recipients, the pair are spending their month together laying the groundwork for their project, generating materials to initiate interviews, and writing grants to fuel the project's forward movement.
|
New Approach to Obermann Humanities Symposium
Application Deadline:
October 26, 2022
|
The last two years have taught us both painful and promising lessons. We’ve learned that the ability to respond to enduring and emerging issues quickly, flexibly, and nimbly can be invaluable. We’ve reaffirmed our commitment to inclusive practices, the embrace of diverse voices, and the intention to keep equitable design at the center of our planning and programs. We’ve recognized that our colleagues from the arts brilliantly invigorate other disciplines when we work in collaboration.
As a result, we’re reimagining our longtime Humanities Symposium as an Arts and Humanities Symposium. We want to lighten the planning and organizational work for symposia directors so that they can focus on the inspiring work of connecting with one another, sharing scholarly and creative discoveries, and experimenting with creative, interactive approaches to artistic and humanistic research. We hope that streamlined planning will open space for imaginative cross-disciplinary symposia where the humanities can deeply connect with the arts, design, politics, the health sciences, environmental studies, technology, and more. Applications for the 2023-24 Arts and Humanities Symposium directorship are due in October 2022.
|
|
Didn't have time to listen? Tune into our 2021-22
Obermann Conversations
|
Economic Development as Social Justice - The UI's Daria Fisher-Page (Law) and Travis Kraus (Planning & Public Affairs) talk with community entrepreneurs about historic barriers faced by BIPOC people interested in starting a business, and why tearing down these barriers matters.
Reproductive Justice - Lina-Maria Murillo (History and GWSS) and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and GWSS) interview midwives and researchers about maternal justice issues beyond Roe v. Wade.
Igniting Change One Wall at a Time - Artists and activists share the process of creating the new "Weaponize Your Privilege" mural and give examples of other transformative public art.
|
Achievements & Recognition
|
-
Eric Zimmer (Graduate Institute) published an op-ed in the Washington Post: "Can the Indigenous #Landback movement secure self-determination?"
- As part of the Seeding Excellence Initiative (SEI), a two-year program designed to sustain the continued growth of the campus research enterprise, multiple Obermann-related faculty were given DEI Team and Supplemental Awards, including Maurine Neiman (Working Groups and Advisory Board), Jason Radley (Fellow-in-Residence), Ebonee Johnson (IDRG), and Christine Shea (Working Groups).
-
Mariola Espinosa (Fellow-in-Residence) received an NEH Summer Stipend Award for her project "Sensational Cures: Medicine, Politics, and Popular Culture in the Spanish-Speaking World."
-
Luis Martin-Estudillo (Fellow-in-Residence), E Cram (IDRG), Corey Creekmur (Fellow-in-Residence), and Christopher Harris (Humanities Symposium) received 2022 AHI grants from the OVPR.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
