Obermann Working Groups

Over 200 faculty, staff, students, and community partners participated in 29 groups this year. These groups enrich members’ research-in-progress, connecting them with cutting-edge developments in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and health and natural sciences. Cross-disciplinary research led to co-designed courses, articles, grants, and speaker series.

Algorithms and Culture Research published “Trust in online search results during uncertain times” in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Black Visual Culture co-planned a three-week series at FilmScene, “Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens.” Facilitating Difficult Dialogues received the 2023 UI Diane L. Finnerty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Legacy Award. Food Studies designed a course on Global Food Migrations. Performance Studies explored performance, film, texts, digital arts, and platforms in the new Stanley Museum Visual Classroom. Reproductive Justice convened stakeholders to discuss reproductive health in Iowa. Translation Across the Humanities helped Working Group director Aron Aji secure a $1M US-DOE grant for a National Resource Center for Translation and Global Literacy.

Interdisciplinary Research Grants

Obermann funded six groups whose projects ranged from a public art demolition derby to studies of families with chronic health conditions.

We also recognized the achievements of two past Interdisciplinary Research groups:

A Summer 2019 IDRG project, Mary Helena Clark (School of Art, The Cooper Union) and Mike Gibisser (Cinematic Arts) led to a multimedia documentary about the Lake Pátzcuaro salamanders and the nuns keeping the species alive. A Common Sequence premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023.

In summer 2021 Micah Bateman and Lindsay Mattock (SLIS) created an online certificate program to train LIS professionals to use digital tools to share cultural heritage collections that feature diverse rural voices. In 2022, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Bateman and Mattock a $150,000 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant for their project, Activating Archives in Remote Communities: Training Rural LIS Professionals for Inclusive Memory Work. 

Collaborating—Seeing Anew Together

One profound impact of the Obermann Center comes from our energetic convening of individuals, communities, and units. Together, we expand perspectives on complex ideas, challenges, and possibilities. To note just a few 2022–23 examples—

• The Impact of Schools on Mental Health: An Obermann Conversation — a collaboration with ICPL | 48 attendees
• Get It Done Workshop — Finding Funding: Wise and Witty Ways to Search (with Mary Blackwood) | 49 attendees
• Faculty Writing and Research Workshop — a weeklong collaboration with OVPR | 14 UI faculty participants
• Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis — a collaboration with the Graduate College | 6 graduate student participants
• Co-sponsorships — Everything from Black Women Behind the Lens film series to an art exhibition on the 19th Amendment to Iowa City Darwin Day  | 25 separate series and events

For Obermann's research and writing workshop, I and a dozen other scholars from a bunch of different disciplines read each other’s work, participated in inspiring and joyful conversation, [and] wrestled with writing prompts [...] I was exposed to ideas I’d never otherwise stumble upon: math! law! journalism! anthropology! It was so delicious and affirming. I got great notes on my article, I got practical, brass-tacks advice on how to be a scholar, and I got to witness these incredibly generous intellectuals make breakthrough after breakthrough. I’m feeling so motivated to suck the marrow out of my scholarship practice this summer. I’m very grateful to have had this incredible growth opportunity.

—Megan Gogerty (Theatre Arts), participant in the Faculty Writing and Research Workshop

Humanities and Public Life Book Series

Around the world, imaginative new cross-disciplinary collaborations in the humanities are connecting academic, local, and global partners. Part exhibition, part documentary, part advice, and part reflection on failures, successes, and possible futures, the books in the Humanities & Public Life series capture the voices of faculty, students, community members, and organizational partners whose work serves the common good. The series, a collaboration between the Obermann Center and the University of Iowa Press, welcomes authors whose work engages with public collaborators and who seek both academic and non-specialist readers.

In 2022, the series published two books:

• Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South by Jodi Skipper

• The City We Make Together: City Council Meeting's Primer for Participation by Mallory Catlett and Aaron Landsman

Mellon Sawyer Seminar: Racial Reckoning through Comics

Directors Corey Creekmur (Cinematic Arts, English, and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies), Ana Merino (Spanish & Portuguese), and Rachel Williams (Dean of Liberal Arts, UNC School of the Arts) organized a yearlong conversation and four exciting public symposia that asked how comics reflect and shape understanding of race and ethnicity in specific times and places. Comics scholars and artists offered powerful ways of seeing how comics can stall or inspire the work of social justice.

The Seminar held four public, two-day symposia; an interview with a major comics artist; and a film screening. Taken together, the events saw upwards of 415 attendees.

You'll find recordings of provocative comics artists like Joe Sacco and the Hernandez brothers, along with groundbreaking scholars and more on the Racial Reckoning through Comics website.