News from Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

ISSUE #22 | Spring 2022

Due May 3:

Letter of Inquiry to Apply for $10K HWW Grand Research Challenge Seed Grants

In the third and final round of Humanities Without Walls' Grand Research Challenge, applicants are asked to build a commitment to methodologies of reciprocity and redistribution into their project design. In order to formulate clearly communicated proposal narratives (which are due in November 2022), the Obermann Center is offering $10,000 to groups that are working toward that proposal. These seed grant applications entail only a letter of inquiry and are due May 3. Topics are open, and groups that already have relationships with public partners are encouraged to consider this opportunity.

If you are considering this opportunity, we suggest that you review the following on the HWW site:

APPLY

A Graduation Cap with And off she went to change the world written on it.

Final Humanities for the Public Good Webinar: Publicly Engaged Humanities Education by Degrees

As part of our work this year for the Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Mellon grant in collaboration with the UI Graduate College, we hosted a webinar series on exciting innovations in graduate education across the country. On Tuesday, April 12, from 3:00-4:30 p.m. CT, the last of these inspiring conversations will focus on publicly engaged, career-flexible degrees at Georgetown, Tulane, Brown, and Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.

The series opened with several of our own faculty members, who redesigned their department’s introduction to graduate studies courses with HPG’s values in mind, including student-centered education, equity and inclusion, a desire to connect learning and research with public service, and career diversity. We’re currently accepting applications from faculty members who want to redesign a graduate seminar as a humanities lab. To prepare faculty and collaborators to apply for this 2022 HPG summer grant, we met with leaders of brilliant humanities labs at Arizona State University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. Colleagues at Syracuse University have launched a website on creative dissertations. We collaborated with them to interview pairs of recent PHDs and their advisors whose dissertations ranged from walking tours to podcasts. All of these videos are available on the Obermann Center's Youtube channel. We hope you’ll use them to inspire conversations in your departments about the future of graduate studies at the University of Iowa.

Working Group Spotlight:

Jewish Studies

This article is part of a series highlighting recently formed Obermann Center Working Groups. Lisa Heineman (History), co-director of the Jewish Studies Working Group with Ari Ariel (History), shared the following responses to our questions. (Thank you, Lisa!) If you are interested in starting an Obermann Working Group for 2022-23, the application deadline is April 12.

Q. This is the first year of your Working Group. What led you to start it?

A: Iowa is the only Big 10 school without a Jewish Studies program. Yet Jewish Studies is an incredibly dynamic field of study, with real contemporary relevance—and we have many terrific teachers and scholars of Jewish Studies on our campus. We were hearing from students, alumni, and parents who made clear there was a demand for the field. We decided it was time to get together and think about how to have a more meaningful presence on campus.

Achievements & Recognition

Kristy Nabhan-Warren (HPG Advisory Board) was awarded the Faculty Communicating Ideas Award for excellence in communication about research and scholarship in the sciences and humanities.
Caleb Pennington (HPG intern) was awarded the Graduate College's Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio Fellowship for Summer 2022 and the Graduate College's Comprehensive Research Fellowship for Fall 2022.
Brady Krien (HPG Advisory Board) won a Graduate Research Excellence Award.
David Cwiertny (Working Groups) and colleagues received a patent for Electrospun Nanofiber Composites for Water Treatment Applications.
Elizabeth Yale (HPG Advisory Board) received a 2021-2022 CLAS Collegiate Teaching Award.

The Multidisciplinary Thinking of Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu Featured at Iowa City Darwin Day

As a longtime co-sponsor of Iowa City Darwin Day, the Obermann Center is delighted to welcome this annual event back to in-person programming this Friday and Saturday, April 8–9. Among this year's main speakers, we are especially excited to hear from Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Assistant Professor in Yale University's Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department. A computational biologist focused on evolutionary genetics and the ecology of disease, Ogbunu says that multi-disciplinary collaboration, creativity, and public engagement are central to his work. He writes for general publications such as WIRED and appears on podcasts such as Story Collider. In his writing, he has explored issues such as STEM's racial reckoning and the limitations of comparing white nationalism to an infectious disease.

Ogbunu speaks twice this week: 4/8 at 4:30 pm, and 4/9 at 10:45 am. Darwin Day's two other keynote speakers are Shamar Chin, a micropaleontologist at the University of Iowa, and Kelly Weinersmith, a science author who studies parasites.

VIEW SCHEDULE