This working group will engage in discussions about race and ethnicity as it intersects with gender, sexualities, ability, and class in national and transnational contexts. Our goal is to cultivate an alliance among scholars who yearn to engage in a conversation beyond a particular discipline and racial-­ethnic group, and to think through points of continuity between historically marginalized groups and aggrieved communities. We see this group as a space to focus on contemporary social movements of Indigenous Nations Peoples and Latino/as, African and Asian diasporas, borderlands, cultural production in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Mexico, Africa, and Latin America, and critical whiteness studies, with a particular focus on Hall, his predecessors, and those influenced by Hall’s contribution to sociology, film studies, popular culture, and cultural studies.

To learn more about this group, please contact its director, Deborah Whaley (deborah-whaley@uiowa.edu). 

This working group brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines, including history, art history, literature, religious studies, and translation. We envision our group as a sort of arts and humanities lab with a focus on premodern China, covering nearly three thousand years (from 10th c. BCE through 19th c. BCE). Members will share in-progress research with each other, provide critical feedback, and read related scholarship together. Our purpose for the coming year is exploratory: we hope to learn what intersections and synergies exist across our research interests and projects. We anticipate that some of these areas will become the starting point for joint research collaborations or hosting public events, and hope that eventually our core group can come to serve as a regional hub for premodern Chinese studies. 

To learn more about this working group, please contact its co-directors, Newell Ann Van Auken (newellann-vanauken@uiowa.edu) and Amy Huang (amy-huang-2@uiowa.edu).

Members of this working group will educate themselves on anti-racist and anti-patriarchal approaches to teaching theatre performance so that we can evolve as educators and change the way we work in our classrooms. Our field as a whole has been dominated by Eurocentric approaches to text that were developed mostly by white cis males, and we all seek the opportunity to explore alternative ways of working and teaching so that we can start and continue the work of decolonization. The members of the acting faculty would like to engage together in this work, and we invite other members of our community including students to join us. 

To learn more about this working group, please contact its director, Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers (kristen-hartsgrove-mooers@uiowa.edu).

This group will provide an informal forum for graduate students and professors in law and philosophy to discuss current issues in legal theory. Members will read and discuss recently published and forthcoming articles on a topic that engages both disciplines.

To learn more about this working group, please contact its director, Mihailis Diamantis (mihailis-diamantis@uiowa.edu).

The goal of this working group is to convene an interdisciplinary community of practice for faculty, students, staff, and community organizations interested in collaborative, ethical digital storytelling. Potential activities include conversations with scholars and community leaders engaged in digital storytelling, readings on how digital storytelling has been practiced across disciplines, feedback and support for members’ own storytelling work, or a collaborative digital storytelling project.

Digital storytelling and other narrative research methods also raise important ethical questions. Sharing stories widely may threaten personal privacy, but not sharing stories could silence storytellers. While ownership over one’s own story is fundamental to the process, facilitators and community partners may seek to shape stories to advance set research or advocacy agendas. In addition, power and privilege inequities between researchers and storytellers structure all elements of the storytelling process. Carefully considering these ethical issues will be at the center of our work together.

To learn more about this working group, please contact its director, Rachel Young (rachel-young@uiowa.edu).

Now in its tenth year, this working group will focus on reading about the existing research where the voices of community partners are at the center of publicly engaged scholarship. This working groups intends to co-author more collaborative pieces that bring in the voices of community partners, an aspect that is largely missing from the scholarly work on publicly engaged scholarship. 

As publicly engaged scholars, the members of this working group believe that at the center of engaged scholarship are campus-community partnerships reflecting careful partnerships and ethical principles of engagement. The group is aware that power, position, and resources may disrupt well-intended activities of public engagement. As such, the group remains sensitive to the power and position members occupy as representatives of the University. As its members are researchers/scholars, the group's scholarship often focuses on those who are less powerful and represent groups who are different with regard to race/ethnicity, language, literacy, and class, and face dramatic health disparities and experience gaps in education. Creating sensitive campus-community partnerships requires constant monitoring of ethics so that communities/local residents do not become laboratories for University research.

Second, from an academic perspective, the members are mindful that engaged scholarship requires time and energy investments and still may not be valued in the academy. Since Year 1, the group's discussions have focused on how members might move the academy so that colleagues and administrators understand the value in publicly engaged efforts of teaching and scholarship. The group will continue discussions focused on creating and maintaining sensitive partnerships with community members while also exploring new visions of engaged scholarship in rural southeastern Iowa. Finally, this working group intends to continue to explore how members can mentor colleagues and graduate students interested in similar work.

To learn more about this group, please contact its director, Carolyn Colvin (carolyn-colvin@uiowa.edu). 

The Transform(ED) Justice Collaboratory envisions a future where the abolition of the carceral system is a reality and the dignity of all humanity is acknowledged, valued, and protected, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, physical and mental abilities, or socio-economic status. The group works toward abolition using education—inside and outside—as our primary tool. We work to transform justice policy and the legal system to center rehabilitation, resilience, and restoration of relationships. At the same time, we support students in higher education who are system-involved, amplify their voices in policy conversations, and work to create a university culture that recognizes system-involved students, staff, and faculty as important contributors to diversity and our community. The Transform(ED) Justice Collaboratory engages academics, practitioners, and community members from across disciplines, across the state, and throughout the country and uses data, research, narrative, and art to effect community-driven change.

To learn more about this working group, please contact its co-directors, Heather Erwin (heather-erwin@uiowa.edu) and Daria Fisher Page (daria-fisherpage@uiowa.edu).