January 2016 Obermann Center Newsletter

Events
  
A 1-day teach-in will highlight examples of how sustainability is being taught across campus.
Feb. 5, 10:30 am -3:30 pm
Iowa City Public Library


Obermann Conversations presents:
Featuring Sally Scott (Johnson County Affordable Homes Coalition), Barbara Baquero (College of Public Health), and Maryann Dennis (The Housing Fellowship)
Feb. 16
4:00-5:30 pm
MidwestONE Bank, 6th-fl. conference rm

 Co-Sponsored

"HOME GR/OWN: Milwaukee's Social Justice Challenges and the Role for Urban Gardens"
Feb. 4
7:00 pm
100 Phillips Hall
Sponsored by Public Policy Center


The Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution
Free film screening and panel discussion featuring Keisha N. Blain (History), David McCartney (Special Collections), and Richard Brent Turner (Religion and African American Studies). Feb. 11
4:00 pm
Illinois Rm (348 IMU)

Feb. 18-20
A grand celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity! 


A lecture & demonstration
Feb. 25, 4:30 pm
University Capitol Center Recital Hall (1670 UCC)
with a concert that evening, 7:30 pm, St. Raphael Orthodox Church

Application Deadliness
 
A Digital Bridges Summer Institute (May 31-June 4, 2016, Grinnell College)
Applications 
due Mar. 4

A Digital Bridges Summer Workshop (August 15-17, 2016, University of Iowa)
Applications 
due Mar. 4

News & Publications
Recent OpEd Project participant and Obermann IDRG Scholar Jessica Welburn (Sociology and African American Studies) copublished an op-ed in The Root, "How a Racist System Has Poisoned the Water in Flint, MI."

University of Iowa graduate students Anu Thapa (Cinematic Arts, CLAS) and Angela Toscano (English, CLAS) have been selected as 2016 Humanities Without Walls Pre-Doctoral Workshop Fellows to participate in a 3-week workshop in Chicago this summer.

Congratulations to recent Fellow-in-Residence Matthew Arndt (Music, CLAS) for receipt of an Innovation in Teaching with Technology Award

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Teaching Sustainability--Across the Disciplines
Feb. 5 Teach-In encourages UI educators to share lessons, syllabi, methods

How can the University of Iowa campus address the great environmental challenges that face our planet and all the beings on it? One way is by making sustainability central to our educational mission. No matter what classes you teach or what discipline you are in, you can find ways to include sustainability. 

On Feb. 5, join teachers from across campus for a 1-day teach-in at the Iowa City Public Library that will highlight existing examples of how sustainability is being threaded into UI classes, often in surprising ways. For ideas about designing everything from single assignments to innovative classes to team-taught Big Ideas courses, join fellow UI teachers as we plan the next steps to put sustainability front and center at the UI.


"Hidden Histories" and a Degree Program for the Recently Incarcerated to Headline Grad Institute's 10th Anniversary

For ten years, the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy has been helping UI graduate students across colleges and disciplines learn how to weave public engagement into their research and teaching. Today, nearly 200 alumni of this program are spearheading public engagement projects literally around the globe--from Jordan to Honduras. They hold tenure-track faculty positions at institutions such as Vanderbilt University and the Medical College of Wisconsin. And they work in state and local government, arts organizations, and K-12 schools. 

On March 3-4, Taking It to the Streets: Celebrating 10 Years of the Obermann Graduate Institute
will showcase past Institute fellows and push participants further in their thinking about engagement
through roundtables, workshops, and exhibits. In addition, two guest speakers will join us (pictured above): Adam Bush, provost of College Unbound, a degree-granting program for underrepresented returning adult learners; and Jennifer Scott, director of the Jane Addams-Hull House Museum in Chicago.

Opportunities in the Digital Humanities
Program bridges UI and Grinnell

The Obermann Center is delighted to be a partner in Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry, a collaboration between Grinnell College and the University of Iowa. Generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the grant offers faculty members and graduate students at both schools opportunities to work together through 2019. 

Building on the strengths of the two very different institutions of higher education, the grant supports the design of socially conscious, intellectually rigorous models for collaborating on digital projects with a particular focus on undergraduate education. Funding allows for summer research collaborations (such as the one profiled below), cross-campus teaching experiments, working groups, stipends to attend Digital Bridges, ICRU assistants, SITA support from graduate students, workshops, and more. 

To learn about funding opportunities or two summer learning opportunities for faculty and graduate students, attend an upcoming informational session: February 19, 12:00-1:00 pm, UI Center for Teaching, 2nd floor UCC.

If you'd like to dig into theoretical work on the digital humanities, contact our postdoctoral fellow, Christina Boyles, to join the new working group: "Theorizing the Digital Humanities."

Linked Reading Project Pushes DH Boundaries
First Digital Bridges Collaborative Grant recipients unveil new site

Last summer, a group of scholars commandeered the Obermann Center attic for a month with the goal of pushing the digital humanities (DH) into a new phase. The team of Blaine Greteman (English, University of Iowa), James Lee (English, Grinnell College), and David Eichmann (School of Library and Information Science, University of Iowa) worked to link two separate database web sites--one which captures the full texts of 25,000 early modern books, the other which includes metadata about the makers and sellers of nearly 500,000 books from a 300-year period. Their work is now coming to fruition with a new web site and a forthcoming article.