This week, CLAS Associate Dean Roland Racevskis and Obermann Director Teresa Mangum will join colleagues from Grinnell for National Humanities Alliance Advocacy Day, a virtual visit with Iowa's Congressional representatives in Washington, DC to share the value of the humanities. The NHA will also release a new report, Strategies for Recruiting Students to the Humanities: A Comprehensive Resource, the culmination of several years of work under its Study the Humanities initiative.The report, which will soon be published online, was featured in Inside Higher Ed, where examples of cross-disciplinary humanities courses and restructured stalwart courses that use contemporary organizational themes are given. We hope the report will provide UI humanities departments with a rich collection of ideas and strategies.

As a professor in the Department of Mathematics and a member of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute, Rodica Curtu uses mathematical analysis to help find treatments for people with debilitating brain disorders, especially disorders that alter people's perception of time. As a Fall 2020 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, Curtu analyzed behavioral data she accessed through a collaboration with UI neuroscientist Kumar Narayanan, whose lab conducts experiments to learn how the brain evaluates the passage of time. With a strong interest in biological applications of math, Curtu says, "To tackle complex problems, we need experts in different areas working together. That’s what they’re doing in industry, but it’s not yet a common practice in academia."

In Spring 2016, Shanna Greene Benjamin, then a faculty member in English at Grinnell College and now an independent scholar, was an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence. During her semester with us, she worked on her book Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay. In a lecture on April 28, via our sister center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Benjamin will tell the story of the scholar who made an indelible mark on higher education by creating space for Black literature, Black scholars, and Black feminist thought. McKay was best known for co-editing the canon-making Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Much was discovered about McKay's life following her death in 2006. Benjamin inserts herself as a counterpoint to her subject through autobiographical sections that question the role of Black feminist scholars in the academy.

Last month, we talked with a trio of women who work intimately with end of life and grief. Laurel Lyckholm is an oncologist and palliative care physician at UI Hospitals and Clinics; Liliane Akimpaye is a hospice nurse; and Lori Erickson is the author of Near the Exit: Travels with the Not-So-Grim Reaper. The three shared their reflections on what COVID has surfaced regarding Americans' attitudes about death. Erickson shared practices from other cultures that she believes are useful ideas for how we might approach death. And the two frontline workers discussed the painful difficulty of being physically removed from the dying through layers of protective gear.