Interdisciplinary Voices Reflect on Global Pandemic
Asia is center of two-part webinar series
On September 18 and 25, an impressive group of interdisciplinary scholars, journalists, and other thought leaders will share their personal and research-informed experiences of the pandemic. "Pandemic, State and Society" was initially conceived of last spring by Shuang Chen (History) and Cynthia Chou (Anthropology and the Center for Asian & Pacific Studies) with the intention of highlighting what was occurring on the ground in Asia, as well as the cultural repercussions of what was being referred to by some as the "China Pandemic." The event has morphed from a small, in-person talk to a two-part webinar featuring medical doctors, historians, journalists, ethnographers, and more.
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From Banggolo
to Bungalow
Mary Lou Emery's new book explores the paradoxical cultural history of the bungalow
In her new book, Bungalow Modernity: A Study of Twentieth Century Fictions of Home (McFarland, 2020), Mary Lou Emery (Emerita, English) explores this global house design, which has been adopted by populations on every continent across four centuries, through the lens of literature. Emery, whose research explores intersections between Modernist Studies and Caribbean Literatures, worked on the book as a Fall 2014 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and as part of the Circulating Cultures Working Group. Via her research on the contributions of Caribbean writers and artists to the transcultural modernism of the early and mid-twentieth century, she began focusing on the bungalow's role in plantations. "I discovered that bungalows were transported to house plantation managers all over the world. They provided material support to British colonialism, plantation slavery in the Americas, and settlement on Native American land." In her research, Emery discovered many surprisingly grim references to bungalows in literature and film.
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Katina Rogers in Conversation with Teresa Mangum
Wednesday, September 16, 4-5 pm CDT
In her new book, Putting the Humanities PhD to Work (Duke University Press, 2020), Katina Rogers invites readers to build a university that is truly worth fighting for by thinking more expansively about what constitutes scholarly success--not only to support individual career pathways, but also to work toward greater equity and inclusion in the academy.
In this session--opened by Cathy Davidson, founding director of the Futures Initiative (Grad Center, CUNY) and co-founder of HASTAC--Rogers will be in conversation with Teresa Mangum, Obermann Center Director, regarding this work that grounds practical career advice in a nuanced consideration of the academic workforce, diversity and inclusion, new modes of scholarly communication, and humanities education as a public good. Rogers posits that career-related initiatives in graduate programs must engage with the pressing issues of graduate education today, such as admissions practices, scholarly reward structures, equity and inclusion, and academic labor practices--especially the increasing reliance on contingent labor. She also examines ways that current practices perpetuate systems of inequality, resulting in continued underrepresentation of women and minorities in the academy.
This session is free and open to all. A limited number of free copies of the book are available at Prairie Lights Bookstore.
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UI Graduate Students Share Summer Internship Experiences
This summer, nine UI graduate students from the Colleges of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Education participated in the Humanities for the Public Good Internship Program. They worked with campus partners and local non-profits, including the Center for Afrofuturist Studies and the National Czech and Slovak Museum, to produce researched guidebooks, virtual programming, curricula, and podcasts.
Kassie Baron (English), one of the interns who worked with the UI Labor Center, wrote of the experience, "I successfully completed my comprehensive exams just before beginning this internship. The area of research that emerged from my preparation focused on literary representations of 19th c. women's labor and what they tell us about visions of the United States. This internship has helped me recognize the ways my research connects to and affects the present, particularly when this information is accessible to the public."
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Humanities 3-Minute Thesis Open for Applications
This is the second year of our humanities-focused competition
The Obermann Humanities 3MT is designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The event challenges graduate students to articulate their complex research clearly and concisely to non-specialist audiences in three minutes or fewer. The presented research can be a student's thesis or PhD work, research related to an internship or other outside project, or research pertaining to a specific class. Last year's Humanities 3MT winner, Christie Vogler (Anthropology; pictured to the left), went on to win the campus-wide competition--to which the Humanities 3MT winner automatically advances. The winner of the Obermann Humanities 3MT receives $250, and two runners-up receive $50 gift certificates to Prairie Lights Bookstore. Due to COVID, this event will not be live; rather, we will be accepting video submissions until Oct. 1.
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Fixmer-Oraiz Wins Prestigious Award
Book calls attention to ways that authorities see non-reproductive and "overly" reproductive women's bodies as threats to social norms
In Summer 2021, Fixmer-Oraiz has an Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant with Sharon Yam (University of Kentucky) to work on a new book, New Grammars for Reproductive Justice, which will trace the struggle among health care providers and reproductive justice advocates to invent vocabularies that account for the intersecting systems of oppressions and histories faced by poor women, people of color, queer, trans, and non-binary people.
Earlier this summer, we interviewed Fixmer-Oraiz for Obermann's Pandemic Insights video series. She spoke about how states, including Iowa, have tried to limit access to abortion during the COVID-19 outbreak, and she reflected on the use of emergency language to curtail reproductive rights. Watch the video below.
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