Events & Deadlines
The following events are either sponsored or co-sponsored by the Obermann Center or highlight work close to that of our mission.
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This issue:
Events & Deadlines
New Book Explores Slave Dwellings and the Career Effects of Publicly Engaged Work
Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges
Humanities for the Public Good Summer Interns Selected
Kowal Dives into National Archives WWII Dance Photos
Achievements & Recognition
Featured Video: The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism
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Scholar, Descendant, Collaborator: Jodi Skipper's new book explores slave dwelling project
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The words "slavery" and "tourism" don’t seem like they belong anywhere near each other. But a growing number of Americans of all races are eager to better understand our country’s complicated history by visiting places where difficult and often darkly violent events occurred. Ensuring that we, the touring populace, receive complete stories when we arrive at these spaces, a network of historians, anthropologists, and community activists are working against time to save the material remnants of the lived experience of enslaved people.
Among them is Jodi Skipper, a University of Mississippi professor of anthropology and southern studies. For the past decade, she has used tools as an archaeologist, scholar, teacher, and community member to widen and deepen the shared narratives of historic sites in the U.S. South. She has shared these experiences in a new book, Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South, just published by the University of Iowa Press in its collaborative series with the Obermann Center, Humanities and Public Life. Skipper will speak this Thursday, April 21, about the book, along with Andrea Roberts (Texas A & M), founder of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, and Jobie Hill, a licensed preservation architect and founder of Saving Slave Houses.
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The very acronym STEM assumes that when scientists try to solve complex problems, they work in teams. Only recently, however, have those teams stretched to include artists, humanities scholars, and social scientists. These expansive teams often work with facilitators grounded in the psychology of relationship-building and the recognition that the success of technical solutions is deeply entangled with community beliefs and practices.
This Friday in the final session of our research series, we'll hear from two “use-inspired” research groups—one focused on water quality issues and the other on social media algorithms and extremism. Both start from the premise that technological solutions require cultural critique and that scholars who study culture might benefit from balancing critique with problem-solving. Members of the two teams will reflect on strategies for creating new kinds of cross-disciplinary teams and the need to adapt metrics and approaches to evaluation in order to acknowledge the complexity of radical interdisciplinarity. Panelists include:
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David Cwiertny, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Director, Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination; Director, Environmental Policy Research Program, Public Policy Center, University of Iowa
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Brian Ekdale, Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Iowa
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Raven Maragh-Lloyd, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Film and Media Studies, Washington University (St. Louis)
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Rishab Nithyanand, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Iowa
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Maya Trotz, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida
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Humanities for the Public Good Summer Interns Selected
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Congratulations to incoming members of the fourth cohort of the Humanities for the Public Good internship program! The following eight students will work with the named public partners for eight weeks to perform research, organize events, and produce digital and print materials:
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Ebenezer Adeyemi (Anthropology) — Multicultural Development Center of Iowa
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Kristiana L. Báez (Communication Studies) — Civil Rights Heritage Center, South Bend, IN
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Matthew Bowman (Art & Art History) — Iowa City Area Business Partnership
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Rebekah Erdman (Music) — Office of the State Archaeologist
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Amelia Goldsby (Art & Art History) — Public Space One
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Kaitlyn Lindgren-Hansen (Religious Studies) — Multicultural Development Center of Iowa
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María Márquez Ponce (Spanish & Portuguese) — UI Libraries & Special Collections
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María Marroquín (Spanish & Portuguese) — Iowa Intersections
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Achievements & Recognition
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Deirdre Egan (Working Groups) received the 2022 Lola Lopes Award for Undergraduate Student Advocacy.
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Laura Carpenter (HPG Intern) and Adelheid Bethanny Sudibyo (Humanities 3MT winner) won 2021 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards.
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Mariola Espinosa (Fellow-in-Residence) was awarded a UI Summer Stipend for her project "Sensational Cures: Medicine, Politics, and Popular Culture in the Spanish-Speaking World."
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Anny-Dominique Curtius (Working Groups) and Naomi Greyser (POROI) are co-recipients of the 2021-2022 Graduate College Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.
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Lina-Maria Murillo (Working Groups) has been accepted to the NEH Summer Institute, "Philosophical Perspectives on Care."
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Kristy Nabhan-Warren (Advisory Board) has edited and published The Oxford Handbook of Latinx Christianities in the United States.
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Sonia Farmer (Graduate Institute) was recognized by the University of the Bahamas and the Wilson Family Foundation with a Wilson Award, which aids in important research on the Bahamas.
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Dancing During War:
Kowal explores WWII photo archives
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“When we think about performance during World War Two, we think about USO shows and famous American performers like Bob Hope and Bette Davis,” says Rebekah Kowal, Spring 2022 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence. On the face of it, these performers were sent to overseas U.S. military camps to uplift soldiers’ spirits by providing a sense of home and “Americanness.” But there were many other forms of movement and performance that served other (rather overt) purposes, from displaying Western cultural dominance and exerting control over subjected people’s bodies to reintegrating the detained, creating a pathway to U.S. citizenship, and serving as a normalcy touchstone for the dancers.
Kowal (Dance, CLAS) is deep in research for a new book tentatively titled War Theatre: Dancing American Citizenship and Empire during World War II, which is inspired by photographs she discovered in the National Archives. The photos have limited contextual documentation and raise more questions than they answer, such as: Who staged these various performances, and what, besides entertainment, did they provide their participants and their audiences? Who took the photos, and what was the supposed purpose of this photography? Were the photos ever disseminated? If so, to whom, in which venues, and/or to what end(s)? To consider these questions and others, Kowal has zeroed in on several dancers and their experiences during WWII.
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What Do We Mean by Research Now? The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism
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In this conversation from March 29, 2022, we heard from a stunning group of artists, performers, proponents of arts-based interdisciplinary research, curators, museum directors, and artist-activists who reflected on the arts as research and how universities can support, celebrate, and reward artists when they turn from galleries to their communities.
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Maryrose Flanigan executive director of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru)
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Denise Frazier, assistant director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University
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Carlos Jackson, co-founder of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA)
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Lisa Yun Lee, executive director of the National Public Housing Museum
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