Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

ISSUE #36 | Fall 2022

Events & Deadlines

The following events are either sponsored or co-sponsored by the Obermann Center or highlight work close to that of our mission.


Dec. 18 - Jan 14 - Winter Break. May it be restorative and peaceful. We'll see you when we return!

Jan. 10 & 12 - Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing (virtual) - via the Teaching with Writing Obermann Working Group

Jan. 23 - Application info session for Humanities for the Public Good Humanities Labs

Jan. 31 - DEADLINE to apply for the Graz International Summer School at the Seggau Castle in Austria - a unique opportunity for internationally-oriented students from all disciplines. This summer's program will focus on the ways in which conflict, challenge, and change are addressed socially, politically, culturally, and economically, and what this means for states, societies, and religions. Scholarships are available. Please share with your students!

Feb. 1 - DEADLINE to apply for 2023-24 UCLA Clark Library Fellowships for senior and postdoctoral scholars

Feb. 2 - Book Ends Book Completion Workshop info session (virtual)

Feb. 9 - A Public Discussion with Comics Artist Joe Sacco, as part of the Racial Reckoning through Comics Mellon Sawyer Seminar

Feb. 9, 10, 11 - The third symposium of the Racial Reckoning through Comics Mellon Sawyer Seminar

March 2 - Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America — Tara Bynum and Kabria Baumgartner in Conversation

March 7 - DEADLINE for Summer 2023 HPG Humanities Labs letters of inquiry

March 30–April 1 - Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium

This issue:


Events & Deadlines


Reading Pleasures Book Event with Tara Bynum


HPG Humanities Lab Funding Opportunity


Obermann Annual Report & Request for Support


Awards & Accomplishments



Featured Video:

Working with a Literary Agent

Tara Bynum to Discuss New Book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America

Join us for virtual conversation with Bynum and Kabria Baumgartner


On Thursday, March 2, at 2:30 p.m. CST, Professors Tara Bynum (English, CLAS) and Kabria Baumgartner (History and Africana Studies, Northeastern University) will discuss Bynum's new book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America (University of Illinois Press), which tells the stories of four early American writers who expressed defiant joy despite living while enslaved or only nominally free.


"The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter. A daring assertion of Black people’s humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends."

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR
Shining Light on Difficult Questions

The World Needs Interdisciplinary Teams, and Obermann Needs YOU!

Please take a moment to read our annual report and consider supporting efforts to fund and connect scholars, artists, and researchers


As you determine the important causes and valuable organizations you’ll donate to at the end of this year, I hope that you will consider giving to the Obermann Center. The resources for supporting research on campus, especially bolstering smaller-scale collaborations and incubating ideas outside the scope of large grants on and off campus, are few. I’m very proud of the ways we help artists, scholars, and researchers catch the flicker of new possibilities in our 30 Working Groups; feel the incandescent thrill of collaborating in summer Interdisciplinary Research Grants; and blaze the way to finishing books in the Book Ends seminars or drawing together national and international communities in our annual Arts and Humanities Symposia.


Thank you, thank you for your time and energy, which light up the Center, the campus, and the world. And thank you for considering a donation to help your fellow artists, scholars, and researchers do the same.


With warmest good wishes and gratitude,


Teresa Mangum, Obermann Director

VIEW 2021-2022 ANNUAL REPORT
SUPPORT THE OBERMANN CENTER

Apply to Transform a Graduate Seminar to a Humanities Lab

Letters of inquiry due March 7; Application info session Jan. 23

This year, we’re thrilled that our Mellon Humanities for the Public Good grant is funding four graduate humanities labs that are transforming “on the books” graduate courses in English, Cinematic Arts, Linguistics, and History. Faculty members are reimagining traditional seminars as applied, experiential “labs” that offer graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities with both a social challenge and skills valued in multiple career settings. Read about these current and developing courses.


Now, we’re delighted that we can provide funding to develop two additional labs in summer 2023. The $15,000 funding can support a planning team including faculty, staff, graduate students, and/or community partners to work together in summer 2023 to develop the lab. In addition, the host department receives $10,000 to acknowledge their commitment to experimentation and collaboration. The course should be offered in the 2023-24 or 2024-25 academic year. View details and examples of humanities labs across the country, along with a detailed description of the application process.


What is a Humanities Lab? 

Like their counterparts in the sciences, humanities labs foreground inquiry, exploration, and collaboration. Often based on the creation or development of a hands on project that addresses a specific and immediate research/social justice issue, humanities labs convene transdisciplinary teams to respond to a hypothesis or problem through collaborative problem- and project-based experiential learning. In some cases, teams of faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, and community partners commit to working together on a wicked problem rich with possibilities for study and problem solving using the subject matter, tools, methods, and dispositions of the humanities. One of the many exciting opportunities afforded by the lab model is aligning humanities subject matter, methodology, and mindsets with contemporary social challenges.


Want to know more?

Review the website links above and/or join Teresa Mangum at an information session on Monday, January 23, from 3:00-4:00 at the Obermann Center.


Please note that this is a two-part application process. A Letter of Inquiry is due by Tuesday, March 7, to obermann-center@uiowa.edu. In the second part of the process, a selection committee will invite the applicants of compelling LOI letters to submit more detailed proposals, which will be due on Tuesday, April 18, after consultation with the HPG team.

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Awards, Accomplishments, & Other Happy News

FEATURED VIDEO

Working with a Literary Agent: Two UI Scholars Offer Practical Advice

In this conversation from November 15, 2021, two University of Iowa faculty members, Carrie Schuettpelz and Meenakshi Gigi Durham, share with us their experiences of working with a literary agent. Since then, Schuettpelz's manuscript, The Indian Card, a narrative exploration of the role of federal rosters, genealogy websites, and blood quantum policies on tribal enrollment and the future of Native identity and sovereignty, was bought at auction by Flatiron Books.


If you weren't able to make it last year, we invite you to give this conversation a listen. It's filled with practical advice from two scholars who have successfully shared their work with mainstream audiences.

WATCH / LISTEN
The University of Iowa