Obermann Center Fellows-in-Residence fully devote themselves to projects within an interdisciplinary community. The program supports artists, researchers, and scholars during periods when focus and feedback are crucial. The program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual community of Fellows.

Each year, up to twelve Fellows are selected competitively: six are in residence during the fall semester and six during the spring semester. The Obermann Center provides an office, a stipend ($1,000), and staff support. During the residency period, Fellows meet every two weeks to share their work-in-progress with one another. Fellows from both the spring and fall semesters are warmly invited to attend events and gatherings hosted by the Obermann Center throughout the year.

This year’s Fellows have joined us from across the university, hailing from disciplines as diverse as dentistry and literature. Their collective work highlights the vast array of research and interests that germinate here at Iowa. We are pleased to share with you the amazing work of our 2014–15 OCAS Fellows-in-Residence:

Matthew Arndt, Music (CLAS)

• Completed a manuscript for a book
• Organized a performance event for spring 2015
• Presented a colloquium talk at University of Wisconsin

Robert Cargill, History (CLAS)

• Completed draft of forthcoming book Cities That Built the Bible (HarperCollins, 2016)
• Worked on a book examining the biblical figure Melchizedek
• Developed a History Channel series pitch

Jonathan Doorn, Human Toxicology (Graduate College) and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics Department (College of Pharmacy)

• Performed research that resulted in writing two major grant applications for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation
• Revised two publications
• Participated in a National Institutes of Health grant review panel

Mary Lou Emery, English (CLAS)

• Continued work on a book-length project about the literary portrayals of the bungalow
• Revised an essay for a forthcoming collection from Edinburgh University Press
• Developed a new course, “Literature and Culture of the 20th/21st Century: World War One, Then and Now”

Lena Hill, English (CLAS)

• Completed an article and a book chapter as well as revised a collection of essays
• Presented work at a conference that resulted in an invitation to publish in a book collection
• Submitted draft of Invisible Hawkeyes, an edited collection about black alumni at the University of Iowa during 1930–70

Michael Hill, English (CLAS)

• Co-edited Invisible Hawkeyes with Lena Hill
• Completed a review of literature pertaining to sex, citizenship, and black adolescence
• Outlined an article on antimaterialist critiques in rap music

Jennifer Iverson, Music (CLAS)

• Completed an article and submitted it for peer review
• Used Obermann research stipend to spend a month in Germany continuing archival research
• Worked on a project about disabled bodies and electronic music, which resulted in a keynote lecture at Boston University

Frank Salomon, Emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Anthropology

• Completed three forthcoming articles and book chapters
• Finished and submitted for consideration a book manuscript, the synthesis of a decade of anthropological research

Leslie Schwalm, History and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies (CLAS)

• Completed a book chapter using archival material collected over the past three years from the New York Public Library
• Developed and presented a conference paper presented at the University of Maryland, which will also be submitted to a journal for review
• Worked with PhD student digitizing service and pension records of African American Civil War nurses, which led to a successful application for the Summer Institute on Digital Pedagogy to develop plans for using this digital archive in the classroom

Learn more about being an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence here.