This working group brings together faculty, graduate students, and community activists with diverse interdisciplinary backgrounds to explore urgent matters that center on motherhood and the struggle for reproductive justice. Drawing on anthropology, history, sociology, communication, and critical cultural studies, our goal is to craft a rigorous space of inquiry that can begin to untangle the stakes and challenges (perhaps even potential paths forward) for a complex set of issues that bears meaningfully and immediately on the lives of women and girls in particular and increasingly in the lives of trans and gender non-conforming people. Shared readings will inform an ongoing and nuanced conversation about reproductive politics in local, regional, national, and transnational contexts. Topics include racism and reproductive injustice, teen motherhood and stigma, public policy and legislative initiatives, histories/meanings of motherhood, movements for reproductive health, queer family formation, and how these intersect with immigration, environmental devastation, the rise of white nationalism and white supremacy, and the carceral state.

To learn more about this group, please contact its co-directors, Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (natalie-fixmer-oraiz@uiowa.edu) and Lina-Maria Murillo (lina-murillo@uiowa.edu).

This working group focuses on reading about the existing research where the voices of community partners are at the center of publicly engaged scholarship. The members of this group believe that at the center of engaged scholarship are campus-community partnerships reflecting careful partnerships and ethical principles of engagement. 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. 

In addition, group members are mindful that engaged scholarship requires time and energy investments and still may not be valued in the academy. The group's discussions have always 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 will 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 year 2023 marks the 400^th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s first folio—the publication that provided the first printing of eighteen plays, including Macbeth, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra. The UI Theatre Department will be producing a play by Shakespeare in Fall 2023, and this working group will bring together scholars and departments to coordinate the program around that play, the anniversary, and the historical and contemporary meaning of the plays after 400 years.

If you would like to learn more about this group, please contact its co-directors, Blaine Greteman (blaine-greteman@uiowa.edu) and Mary Mayo (mary-mayo@uiowa.edu).

The goal of this working group is to bring together scholars, graduate students, and instructors interested in discussing the particular contextual factors that affect Heritage Language speakers at the University of Iowa (those who grew up speaking Spanish at home or in communities where Spanish is a minority language) and in the broader context of the state of Iowa. Specifically, to frame our goals, we will use the approach of Critical Language Awareness, which emphasizes how oppressed groups can critically evaluate their surroundings and seek change through empowering, critiquing and questioning. At the end of our Working Group period, we will have a clearly articulated set of objectives for the University of Iowa Spanish Heritage Language Program. We will establish a set of curricular goals that will serve the needs of Heritage Language students and include Critical Language Awareness as a cornerstone. 

To learn more about this working group, please contact its co-directors, Christine Shea (christine-shea@uiowa.edu) and Becky Gonzalez (rebecca-gonzalez-1@uiowa.edu). 

Formerly the Writing University Working Group, the Teaching with Writing Working Group provides a space for faculty and staff to come together to talk and learn about teaching with writing in the disciplines through reading and research and by consulting with Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) experts from other universities. As an “action research” group, we also plan and implement programming: formal and informal talks with instructors in different Iowa departments; Institutes for Teaching with Writing; and a possible intensive Teaching with Writing pilot in selected CLAS departments. Because our goals are now closely focused on academic-writing infusion in different disciplines, the group is now composed of a diverse range of instructors and staff from departments and colleges across the UI campus.

To learn more about this working group, please contact its co-directors, Carol Severino (carol-severino@uiowa.edu) and Deirdre Egan (deirdre-egan@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).

Across the humanities, translation has always been either an object or a mode of inquiry. Many U.S. scholars who work with non-English sources often incorporate passages they translate into their published work, and of course continuously do their own translations for their research and teaching. Scholars who do translation come from a wide range of disciplines, such as Classics, Philosophy, Religious Studies, History, English, Art History, various area studies, and of course, Literary Translation. However, most such scholars have little or no training in translation studies and often do their translations in a somewhat unreflective way. The purpose of this working group is to cultivate a learned and thoughtful community of scholars who do translation at the University of Iowa and that supports both the professional development of each faculty member as well as translation as an interdisciplinary field of practice and study.

To learn more about this group, please contact its co-directors, Aron Aji (aron-aji@uiowa.edu) and Morten Schlütter (morten-schlutter@uiowa.edu).