Register for Sept. 22 Virtual InkWell Academic Writing Workshop

We're still accepting applications for our September 22 daylong writing retreat, "Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall." The retreat, led by Michelle Boyd of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats, is intended for faculty and graduate students engaged in academic writing projects across the UI. We'd love to have you join us!

Welcome, New Advisory Board Members!

Behind the scenes at the Obermann Center, our work relies on the valuable contributions of our partners, participants, and especially of our Obermann Advisory Board. We want to share our warmest thanks for the astute, generous, sometimes usefully challenging, always warm and witty advice of the members of the board who have worked with us for the last three years and to welcome our incoming board members. 

Sincere thanks to—

• Jen Buckley, English, CLAS
• Brandi Janssen, Occupational and Environmental Health, College of Public Health
• Amanda Thein, Graduate College and Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, College of Education

Welcome onboard to—

• Cynthia Chou, Anthropology and Asian Studies, CLAS
• Blaine Greteman, English, CLAS
• Ebonee Johnson, Community and Behavioral Health, College of Public Health

They join our current wonderful board members—

• Mary Beth Easley, Theatre Arts, CLAS
• Claire Fox, English and Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS
• Cory Gundlach, Stanley Museum of Art
• Maurine Neiman, Biology and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, CLAS
• Victor Ray, Sociology & Criminology and African American Studies, CLAS
• Steve Warren, History and American Studies, CLAS
• Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Religious Studies and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, CLAS, and Office of the Vice President for Research (ex officio)
• Roland Racevskis, French & Italian, CLAS (ex officio)

E Cram wins Rhetoric Society of America 2023 Book Award

Congratulations to E Cram, 2019 Obermann/OVPR Book Ends awardee and winner of the Rhetoric Society of America's 2023 Book Award!

The RSA Book Award recognizes the best work in rhetorical studies published by an RSA member in a given year. This year’s committee named as co-awardees Christa Olson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for American Magnitude: Hemispheric Vision and Public Feeling in the United States (Ohio State UP 2021) and

E Cram (University of Iowa) for Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, Energy and the Making of the North American West (California UP 2022).

9 Obermann Alums Awarded OVPR Funding

We're thrilled to announce that 9 current and former Obermann scholars have received OVPR awards for 2023-24!

Recipients of Seeding Excellence Initiative awards:

• Carolyn Colvin ('23 Fellow-in-Residence, Obermann Working Groups) and Melissa Lehan-Mackin will join with community members in West Liberty, Iowa, to explore how a partnership program that pairs new and established citizens can create investments in civic participation and engagement.
• Kay Ramey, Margaret Beck ('21 Fellow-in-Residence), and two community partners, Alicia Velasquez, local Native American Artist and owner of The House of DOTLIZHI, and Kirk Cheyney, Director of Operations for the Iowa City Fab Lab, will work to broaden participation in STEAM learning among local youth.
• Sherry Watt (Obermann Advisory Board), Micah Bateman ('21 Interdisciplinary Research Grant), and Milad Mohebali will establish a reciprocal and mutually beneficial partnership with the City of North Liberty, Iowa, to build stamina for engaging across difference.

Recipients of Arts & Humanities Initiative grants:

• Thomas Oates will bring high-profile scholars to campus to discuss the urgent cultural issue of politics in commercialized sports as part of the Fall 2023 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium, “Sports, Power and Resistance: Legacies and Futures” (Sept. 21-23, co-directed by Travis Vogan).
• Margaret Beck ('21 Fellow-in-Residence) will help to reconstruct nonindustrial ceramics technologies, yielding information about the broader social and economic contexts in which the Mississippian potters (AD 1000-1200) lived and worked.
• Tara Bynum ('21 Book Ends) will perform research for her book-in-progress, Six Degrees of Phillis Wheatley, which pursues the communities and relationships surrounding the previously enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley.
• Rachel Cox (Working Groups) will further her project, “Some Women: A Photographic Inquiry into Infertility and Reproduction," which will reveal, through images and text, a first-hand account of IVF and loss.
• Allison Rowe ('23 Interdisciplinary Research Grant) will further her work on Just Crushing: A Demolition Derby, which will turn the American political discourse into a “spectacle of competitive wreckage” by staging a demolition derby—involving critical issues represented by derby vehicles—during the buildup to the 2024 election.

FEATURED VIDEO SERIES:

MLA Sit and Write Snack Recordings

Working on a summer writing project? Check out the MLA's Sit and Write Snack recordings! These bite-sized presentations offer professional development on writing, revising, editing, and publishing.