The Obermann Center furthers the research, teaching, and engagement mission of the University thanks to the generosity of a large community of supporters. I am, as always, indebted to my extraordinarily talented Obermann colleagues—Jennifer New, Erin Hackathorn, and Jenna Hammerich. We wish our student assistant Freya Yu all the best as she returns to China. I also want to acknowledge our Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellows for their work with us—Matthew Hannah, Melissa Moreton, and Christina Boyles, who is headed off to an exciting new career at Trinity College.

I greatly appreciate the support of the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, especially Vice President Dan Reed and Senior Assistant Vice President Ann Ricketts. The Graduate College has steadfastly supported the Obermann Graduate Institute. The collegiality, hard work, wit, and wisdom of our several advisory boards are invaluable.

Once again this year, the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has been a great gift to the Center and the campus. The Foundation provided continued support for the project “Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership.” Thanks to a fine proposal integrating research and book arts from professors Paul Dilley, Katherine Tachau, and Tim Barrett, the University of Iowa was awarded our first ever Sawyer Seminar, which we were happy to support, along with other units on campus.

Finally, I offer my warmest thanks to all who donated to the Obermann Center. We have never needed votes of confidence in the arts, research, and scholarship more than we do now. Please consider contributing to the Obermann Center. We see countless opportunities for new initiatives and new “snapshot” moments that we can create with your help. We look forward to seeing you at our many public events in 2017–18!

Gratefully,

Because you have connected with colleagues outside of your discipline through Obermann, making your work and your university life richer. Projects and thinking expand at meetings in our library; from the biweekly Fellows-in-Residence seminar to our Working Groups, scholars make new friendships and gain vital collegial input.

Because you believe in the power of young scholars to push boundaries and contribute to our civic fabric. Through the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy, we ground University of Iowa graduate students from all disciplines in publicly engaged research and teaching. We continue to mentor alumni from this program as they plan symposia, workshops, and exhibits.

Because our events provide a unique opportunity for UI scholars and artists to connect with the community. This year, we sponsored a standing-room-only presentation about aging in place; an astounding music performance that combined jazz, spoken word, and the history of an unlikely hero; a series about the future of public higher education that included a documentary film screening at the Englert and a specialist on student loan debt; and a project with statewide reach that examined the significance of Iowa’s German roots.

Because you know that great universities need spaces that are both neutral and enriching, beyond departmental obligations, and dedicated to intellectual process as much as product. Time and time again, we hear from participants in our programs that the Obermann Center provided them a necessary space in which to think and connect.

Please consider giving to Obermann. You can make a monthly paycheck deduction, give in memory of a fellow scholar, or make arrangements for deferred giving. 

2016–17 Donors to the Obermann Center

Thank you to the following faculty, staff, emeritus faculty, and community friends who have recognized the value of the Obermann Center’s work and our unique role at the University of Iowa. Your gifts make our work not only possible but more creative and further-reaching.

• Elizabeth M. Altmaier
• Michael J. Altmaier
• The American Association of University Professors, University of Iowa Chapter
• Jonathan G. Andelson
• Kurt M. Anstreicher
• David Asa
• Susan J. Birrell
• Kenneth G. Brown
• Joseph A. Buckwalter IV
• Kathleen C. Buckwalter
• Jonathan C. Carlson
• Susan A. Carlson
• David J. Cohen
• Mary L. Cohen
• Matthew A. Cohen
• Carolyn A. Colvin
• Corey Creekmur
• David R. Cunning
• Anny D. Curtius
• Marcella David
• Virginia R. Dominguez
• M. Patricia Donahue
• Rita Felski
• Naomi Greyser
• David L. Gould
• Renee M. Gould
• John E. Grant
• Mary Lynn Grant
• Carolyn Copps Hartley
• John P. Hartley
• Lyell D. Henry, Jr.
• Gretchen B. Holt
• Juan P. Hourcade
• Amy L. Kristof-Brown
• Johna Leddy
• Irwin P. Levin
• Patricia G. Levin
• Jeffrey D. Liebermann
• Tracy A. Liebermann
• David F. Lohman
• Sheryl C. Lohman
• James F. Longstaff
• Patricia Hirl Longstaff
• Peter J. Manning
• Betty Bang Mather
• Karla K. McGregor
• Allan D. Megill
• Anna Mary Mueller
• Edith A. Parker
• Corinne Peek-Asa
• Charles M. Peters
• Mary Ann Peters
• Silvia Quezada
• Ann M. Ricketts
• David C. Ricketts
• Patricia A. Riezman
• Raymond G. Riezman
• John N. Rosazza
• Trudi S. Rosazza
• Hutha R. Sayre
• Susan E. Scheckel
• Susan M. Shullaw
• Karin M. Stein
• Cameron Thies
• Jane van Voorhis

The UI Mellon Sawyer Seminar was a yearlong interdisciplinary collaboration dedicated to mapping cultural exchanges across Eurasia from roughly 400 CE ­ ca. 1450 CE, by focusing on the development, distribution, and sharing of manuscript technologies. 

Funded by a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with support from the Obermann Center, the seminar, Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Pre-Modern Eurasia, was led by Timothy Barrett (Center for the Book, Graduate College), Paul Dilley (Classics and Religious Studies, CLAS), Katherine Tachau (History, CLAS), and our Mellon-funded Obermann Postdoctoral Fellow, Melissa Moreton. From October through May, 25 internationally distinguished scholars and conservators visited campus to share their expertise in the various manuscript cultures of pre­modern Eurasia.

Unique Combination of Intellectual and Hands-on Experiences

The seminar was unique in that in addition to a yearlong series of public lectures (which can be viewed here), visiting experts also gave hands-on workshops. “We worked hard to make sure that hands-on manuscript-making workshop-style sessions were an integral part of the seminar,” said Barrett, who leads the UI’s Center for the Book in addition to being a master craftsman and paper historian. “We also invited book arts practitioners with expertise in papermaking, calligraphy, and bookbinding to become fully engaged with visiting scholars and manuscript conservation specialists. The result was an intriguing exchange of ideas and a lot more energized, I am convinced, than a purely academic conversation. At the UI Center for the Book, we’re continuing to find that this combination of specialists and the integration of hands-on exercises with scholarly discussion fosters an uncommon level of new learning for all concerned.”

One participant concurred. Noting a highlight for him, William Johnson, Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University, said, “The papyrus manufacturing session run by Myriam Krutzsch finally made Hendricks’s theory on papyrus manufacture make sense to me, and taught me lots else besides.”

Across Disciplines and Geographies

Bringing scholars together from disparate fields and geographic loci was also significant. Zoroastrian, medieval Afro-Eurasian, Pali, and Yemeni Zaydi manuscripts were among the many lecture topics.

One participant, Brent Nongbri,Visiting Associate Professor at Aarhus University, said, “The interdisciplinary approach of the seminar was definitely eye-opening for me. I’ve spent the last few years undertaking the challenging task of trying to get a handle on the unwieldy corpus of Greek, Latin, and Coptic books from the third to seventh centuries. Coming to the seminar and learning about later Arabic and Zaydi codices, seeing the similar sorts of codicological problems one encounters (construction, provenance, etc.), broadened my horizons in ways that I was not even aware I needed.”

The Seminar group was comprised of University of Iowa and Grinnell College faculty and graduate students from Religious Studies, Classics, Center for the Book, Library & Information Science, and History. The group convened approximately 15 times over the course of the 2016–17 academic year. Five of the seminar meetings included workshops in which participants reproduced historically significant book structures with their associated materials under the guidance of book conservators and book binders.

In 2017–18, Moreton and Dilley will work on a digital mapping project to represent and share the findings from the seminar.

ANDREW W. MELLON SAWYER SEMINAR PRESENTERS:

• Mark Barnard, formerly head of Paper Conservation at the British Library
• T.H. Barrett, formerly Professor of East Asian History in SOAS, University of London
• Jim Canary, Head of Conservation at the Lilly Library, Indiana University; adjunct faculty, Henry Hope School of Fine Arts; founding member, Paper Road Tibet
• François Déroche, Professor, École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
• Michael Friedrich, Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, Universität Hamburg; Director, Research Group on the Manuscript Cultures of Asia, Africa, and Europe, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
• Gary Frost, Conservator Emeritus, University of Iowa Libraries; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Center for the Book, University of Iowa; co-founder, Paper and Book Intensive (PBI)
• Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, Professor of Asian Religious Art, Northern Arizona University
• Cheryl Jacobsen, artist/ calligrapher; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Center for the Book, University of Iowa
• William A. Johnson, Professor of Classical Studies, Duke University
• Yasmeen Khan, Senior Book Conservator, Library of Congress
• Myriam Krutzsch, papyrus conservator, Papyrus Collection of the Egyptian Museum at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
• Erik Kwakkel, Professor, Leiden University
• AnneMarie Luijendijk, Professor of Religion, Princeton University
• Justin McDaniel, Chair of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• Julia Miller, senior book conservator, University of Michigan Library
• Vito Mocella, Researcher at the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems, Italian National Research Council, Rome
• Brent Nongbri, Visiting Associate Professor, Aarhus University
• Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Senior Research Associate, Division for Byzantine Research at the Institute for Medieval Research in the Austrian Academy of Sciences; Lecturer, Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna
• Lynn Ransom, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Schoenburg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania; Director of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (SDBM); founding editor of Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
• Marina Rustow, Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor of History, Princeton University; Director of the Princeton Geniza Lab
• Richard Salomon, William P. and Ruth Gerberding Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Washington;  Director, University of Washington’s Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project
• Sabine Schmidtke, Professor of Islamic Intellectual History in the School of Historical Studies, Princeton University
• Brent Seales, Professor and Chair of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments (Vis Center), University of  Kentucky.
• Shai Secunda, Jacob Neusner Associate Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism, Bard College; Founder and Co-editor, Talmud Blog
• Daniel Lord Smail, Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History, Harvard University
• Kevin van Bladel, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Near East Languages and Cultures, Ohio State University
• Susan Whitfield, Curator of Central Asian manuscripts; Co-founder and head of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP), British Library
• Abdurishid Yakup, Changjiang Scholar and Distinguished Professor of Ministry of Education of China; Dean of the School of Languages and Literature of Chinese Ethnic Minorities, Minzu University of China, Beijing; Research Fellow at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany

]]> obermanncenter CulturalTextualExchange final 1.20.17 for youtube https://ocasannualreport2017.com/2017/06/21/gigm/ Wed, 21 Jun 2017 16:24:44 +0000 http://ocasannualreport2017.wordpress.com/?p=8 The purpose of the Obermann Humanities Symposium is to explore an important humanities topic that highlights UI scholars and current scholarship. Often interdisciplinary, the Symposium can include public events, lectures, and related courses.

German Iowa and the Global Midwest

German Iowa and the Global Midwest was a three-day symposium (Oct. 6-8, 2016) that explored Iowa’s multicultural heritage. Organized by Elizabeth Heineman (History, CLAS), Glenn Ehrstine (German, CLAS), and H. Glenn Penny (History, CLAS), the 2016–17 Obermann Humanities Symposium was the catalyst for a series of yearlong events that included two exhibitions, one at Old Capitol Museum and another in the UI’s Mobile Museum; Doing Global History Locally: an International Programs Conference; and Town to Town, a workshop sponsored by Humanities Iowa to assist Iowa communities in hosting and contributing to the traveling exhibit. Visit the lively conference website.

“Working on this project with the Obermann Center fundamentally changed the way I teach. Whereas my European history classes used to focus overwhelmingly on secondary material and center on the continent of Europe, my courses today send students into local archives looking for global history.”

—H. Glenn Penny, co-director

Highlights

• Frank Trommler, an Ida Beam speaker, gave two public talks. The first, in the public library (ICPL), required extra chairs (80–90). The second, in the Senate Chamber of the Old Capitol, also was well attended (60–70). The latter event was introduced by Provost Barry Butler, who offered an introduction to the German Consul General Herbert Quelle.
• Among the many well-attended and thoughtful panels, the student panel stood out. Undergraduates gave papers that one member of the audience remarked were every bit as good as those one would expect at a national conference. The students who presented had the opportunity to do so alongside people whose work they had been reading for years. There is no question that students who attended these events benefited greatly. They have been inspired to pursue their own research projects and will no doubt seek out similar events in the future.
• The symposium included two musical events in partnership with the School of Music. The quality of the performances, combined with Glenn Ehrstine’s research and discussion of German music in Iowa around the turn of the century, made the Sängerfest performance especially lively. Again, undergraduate and graduate students who attended this and the subsequent performance came away with a completely different vision of life in Iowa 100 years ago—German or otherwise. During both performances, the auditoriums were filled, with many standing and sitting in the aisles.
• The final day’s panels did not lose any momentum. In fact, the last panel on German Jews in Iowa brought in large numbers of people from the community (75–80).

“Unlike most professional conferences I attend, the Obermann Humanities Symposium gave me the opportunity to engage the broader public while discussing Iowa’s German-American past with international experts. My personal highlights of the event: welcoming the German Consul General from Chicago and seeing over 250 lovers of choral music turn out for a concert from the Davenport Sängerfest of 1898. Best of all, the Obermann Center staff were there to guide us along the way and ensure the event reached its full potential.”

—Glenn Ehrstine, co-director

Other Successes and Outcomes

• Glenn Penny and Glenn Ehrstine incorporated the program as well as the museum exhibit into their classes with great success. Some 50 students wrote short papers on the presentations for Penny’s classes. Discussions in those classes have continued to return to these presentations all semester.
• One undergraduate, William Simpson, had an article, “A Rookie’s Guide to Archival Research,” regarding his work on the Scattergood Hostel in West Branch, IA, published on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website. Simpson was also featured in Iowa Now.
• Two special journal issues were being planned immediately following the symposium: an issue of Jewish Studies Journal and and issue of a migration history journal.
• A conference report written by graduate students was published on H-Net, while a reflection on the German Iowa and the Global Midwest project is being negotiated with German Studies Review.
• The co-directors are in conversation with a group of Germans who attended from the University of Münster to develop an exchange program, a means to bring their students to Iowa to work with local materials and communities.

• The Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at UW–Madison is interested in hosting the German Iowa and the Global Midwest exhibit in 2018.

“It was thrilling to work on a project that integrated public engagement, hands-on student experience, and cutting-edge scholarship so seamlessly. Bringing symposium participants to the museum exhibit, which had built on student research—and which is now touring the state—sparked a lot of discussion about the Obermann Center and UI as a model for this kind of work!”

—Elizabeth Heineman, co-director

Speakers, Panelists, and Moderators

• Frank Trommler, Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Pennsylvania
• Kirsten “Kit” Belgum, Associate Professor of German at the University of Texas at Austin
• Tobias Brinkmann, Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at the Pennsylvania State University
• Heike Bungert, Professor of American Studies at the University of Münster
• Kathleen Neils Conzen, Thomas E. Donnelley Professor Emerita of American History at The University of Chicago
• Alison Efford, Associate Professor of History at Marquette University
• Jeannette Gabriel, PhD candidate in the University of Iowa Department of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, and curator of the Jewish Women in Iowa Project
• Walter D. Kamphoefner, Professor of History at Texas A&M University
• Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, PhD candidate in Musicology, CLAS, at the University of Iowa, and a staff member at the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
• Bradley Naranch, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Montana
• Jana Weiß, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Münster
• Bethany Wiggin, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania
• Andrew Zimmerman, Professor of History at George Washington University

Mary Cohen (Music, CLAS; College of Education)

• Conducted research for her book Silenced Voices: Music-Making in U.S. Prisons
• Edited the proceedings from the 2016 Community Music Activity Seminar
• Developed a partnership with Iowa City’s Horace Mann Elementary School to create opportunities for UI School of Music graduate students to teach at Horace Mann
• Formed “Buddy Mentors” program for UI music education students; the program partners current students with recent graduates of the program who are teaching in the region
• Planned Oakdale Choir concert performance, including arranging three original songs and rehearsing with the choir

“It was great to have a place to go to away from home…. I also really appreciated meeting the other Obermann fellows.”

Edward Cohn (History, Grinnell College)

• Wrote an article manuscript, presented it at the Midwest Russian History Workshop at Northwestern University, revised it, and then submitted it to a journal
• Drafted a conference paper for the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe
• Submitted an application for an NEH Fellowship application
• Entered information about 300 cases of KGB persecution in the Baltic states into a database for a book project

“The Obermann Center has been a great place to work this semester. I’ve enjoyed participating in the Center’s biweekly seminar (where I presented a journal article I’m about to submit), and it’s been really convenient to be near the UI library and other historians and scholars of Russia.”

Kathleen Diffley (English, CLAS)

• Submitted a revised book prospectus for The Fateful Lightning: Civil War Stories and the Literary Marketplace, 1861-1876
• Completed a newly theorized book introduction
• Revised and submitted a conference paper for a biennial author society meeting (“Numbered, Numbered: Commemorating the Civil War Dead in Woolson’s ‘Rodman the Keeper’”), a paper that has since become an invited essay for a prestigious special issue of American Literary History on Reconstruction
• Organized and chaired two American Literature Association sessions, one of which resulted in an invitation to edit a special issue of ESQ on Reconstruction(s)
• Organized an eight-session conference for November 2017

“You bet I’m grateful for the encouragement, support, and sheer quiet that the Obermann Center provides. The staff is uniformly welcoming, and the biweekly seminars have always been collegial, productive, and truly invigorating.”

James Enloe (Anthropology, CLAS)

• Prepared data from the Upper Paleolithic archaeological site of Verberie, France, for a monograph on the excavation of this prehistoric reindeer hunters’ campsite
• Began drafting the French language text of a chapter of the Verberie monograph
• Wrote yearly report for Coralville Reservoir excavation permit and submitted it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• Prepared presentations on Woodpecker Cave for the 2016 Midwestern Archaeological Conference and the 2017 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology
• Co-authored a paper for the Journal of Human Evolution

“Obermann’s biweekly seminar was an integral part of the success of my fellowship. By bringing in viewpoints from other disciplines, I was able to sharpen the clarity of my papers. As the only professed scientist in the group, it reminded me of how to effectively integrate humanist points of view in emphasizing the significance of my scientific questions and results. Participating in the seminar when others presented helped me keep a more open mind on other disciplines, enriching my understanding of the humanities. And it was fun!”

Marian Wilson Kimber (Music, CLAS)

• Wrote an article on women composers’ concerts organized by Phillis Fergus in the 1930s on behalf of the National League of American Pen Women
• Prepared a lecture recital of compositions for spoken word and piano by Phyllis Fergus and other women composers, memorizing and practicing eleven poems
• Conducted research at Pen Arts archive in Washington, DC
• Designed a new course

“The biweekly seminar was helpful in my thinking beyond my specific project about my next career steps, my relationship to academia as a whole, and the state of academia’s relationship to the broader world.”

Matthew Kluber (Art, Grinnell College)

Professor Kluber was a Mellon University of Iowa/Grinnell College Digital Bridges Fellow-in-Residence.

• Built a digital image database of artwork created by Grinnell students, which will eventually be accessible to current students and faculty as well as prospective students and alumni. It will become part of Digital Grinnell, the database for Grinnell College scholarship, with a link on the Department of Art and Art History’s website.

Shaun Vecera (Psychological and Brain Sciences, CLAS)

• Revised and resubmitted a manuscript on attentional disengagement under active listening
• Wrote follow-up manuscript on attentional disengagement under working memory maintenance and manipulation
• Met weekly with a group of three undergraduate students for a guided independent reading project
• Visited Prof. David Strayer at the University of Utah to develop a collaborative study on attentional search/scanning during driving

“My time at the Obermann Center was valuable for giving me space that I could devote to writing, reading, and thinking.”

Manuel Vilas (Author)

• Wrote the poem “Great Hotel of the Borromean Islands,” which won the prestigious XXV Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize in June 2017
• Worked on a new nonfiction book, Crónicas Americanas (American Chronicles), which develops a literary and socio-poetic approach to the space of several American cities through the perspective of a Spanish narrator confronting American myths and culture

The Digital Bridges team includes:

• PIs Erik Simpson (Grinnell College), Jim Elmborg (Library & Information Science, Graduate College, UI), and Obermann Director Teresa Mangum (UI)
• Postdoctoral Fellows Jen Shook (English Department alumna, now at Grinnell) and Matthew Hannah and Christina Boyles, both Obermann Postdoctoral Fellows (UI)
• UI graduate students from the SITA (Student Instructional Technology Assistants) wing of the UI Office of Teaching, Learning, & Technology: Michael Goldberg, Trevor Templeman, and Reuben Vyn

We warmly congratulate Christina Boyles on her new position as Digital Project Coordinator at the Trinity College Library and Jim Elmborg, who is joining the University of Alabama as director of UA’s School of Library and Information Sciences.

We also share our gratitude for the many undergraduates who have worked with us and for Erin Hackathorn, Obermann Director of Operations, for her support.

A few highlights from the 2016–17 academic year

Collaborations

Kathy Lavezzo (English, CLAS, UI) and Tim Arner (English, Grinnell College) collaborated on a digital project titled Remappings: Christians and Jews in Early England. Placing special emphasis on pedagogical applications, the project animates Jewish-Christian interaction in medieval and Renaissance England via maps, text, video, and other media.

Paul Dilley (Classics and Religious Studies, CLAS, UI) and James Lee (English, Grinnell College) use large digital collections of Latin and early modern English literature to better understand how classical literature was received by early modern readers in their project, Mining the Renaissance through Multilingual Topic Modeling. They break new ground by using topic modeling to show how concepts like prayer and knowledge developed from antiquity to the Renaissance.

Shanna Benjamin (English, Grinnell College) and Michael Hill (English and African American Studies, CLAS, UI) are developing a web-based project to track the graduate education of African Americans in the Midwest.

Christopher Merrill (English, CLAS, and Director of the International Writing Program, UI), Nataša Durovicová (Cinematic Arts, CLAS, and the International Writing Program, UI), and Jin Feng (Chinese and Japanese, Grinnell College) are documenting Chinese writers’ visits to the UI’s International Writing Program over the 50 years of its existence, mapping the writers and creating a timeline to show the program’s influence upon a larger community of Chinese writers.

Jenny Anger (Art, Grinnell College) launched the Virtual Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon project after the 2015 Summer Institute and was joined by Joyce Tsai, Clinical Associate Professor of Art Education (College of Education, UI) and curator at the UI Museum of Art. They are developing 3-D visualizations of art exhibitions for use in their teaching. Anger’s project is a replication of an early twentieth-century art exhibit in Berlin, and Tsai’s will capture the history of intermedia arts at the UI.

A few additional projects

Matthew Kluber (Art, Grinnell College) was the Digital Bridges Obermann fellow for 2016–17. He created a digital image database of artwork by Grinnell students that will be part of Digital Grinnell, the database for Grinnell College scholarship. He also took his fellow Obermann Fellows on a fascinating tour of the studio where he produces his own digital art.

Diana Cates (Religious Studies, CLAS, UI) and her students continue to develop their virtual Medville Clinic, the heart of Cates’s course, “Hard Cases in Health Care: Ethics at the Beginning of Life.” She discusses the project here.

Kim Marra (Theatre Arts and American Studies, CLAS, UI) is producing a digital video project with the UI Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio and additional support from numerous sources, including Digital Bridges. The Pull of Horses: Embodied Interactions across Urban American Species, 1865–1930 draws on a rich archive of nineteenth-century visual sources.

Summer Institutes

2016 — Making Meaning with Data in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Five faculty members and graduate students from the UI joined fifteen Grinnell faculty members to explore ways their teaching and research could be enriched by data visualization.

2017 — Digital Storytelling: The national organization StoryCenter led an intense, powerful, and wildly successful institute for twenty faculty and graduate students.

Speakers and workshop leaders

The grant also brought leading scholars in the digital arts and humanities from across the country to the UI, often in collaboration with our generous partners, the UI Libraries, the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, and departments on both campuses. Just to note a few—

• September 7, 2016: Gina Bloom, Associate Professor of English at the University of California–Davis, installed her motion-capture video game, Play the Knave, at the UI Main Library and gave a public lecture on opportunities for humanities scholars and teachers to integrate the humanities into STEAM initiatives, offering Play the Knave as a successful case study.
  Read Iowa Now story, “‘Play the Knave’ puts players in the players’ shoes”
  Watch video: “Virtual Shakespeare at the University of Iowa”
• February 16–17, 2017: Catherine D’Ignazio, Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization at Emerson College, gave a public talk titled “Playful Data, Empowered Publics” on technocultural practices that combine participation, creativity, and context to connect data to everyday life.
  D’Ignazio also led a workshop, “Creative Data Storytelling 101,” teaching participants how to use online data storytelling tools and engage in critical data literacy activities that they can adapt and use in their own classrooms or workplaces to teach others about data storytelling.
• May 15–16, 2017: Leah Nahmias, Director of Programs and Community Engagement at Indiana Humanities, led a workshop, Project Management 101 for the Arts and Humanities, in which she shared expertise in project management she developed through her many years with state humanities councils. Participants learned specific strategies for planning and conducting ambitious arts and humanities collaborative projects, including effective ways to establish and maintain partnerships; use checklists, timelines, and other collaborative tools; secure stakeholder investment; design effective communications plans; create and oversee a budget; and create feedback loops to evaluate and adjust throughout a project.

“The workshop had an incredible crew assembled, and Leah fostered interconnectivity and sharing of expertise.”

—Project Management 101 for the Arts and Humanities participant

To learn more about Digital Bridges projects, we welcome you to view brief videos with participants on the Obermann Center’s YouTube channel.

Linking the Big Ancient Mediterranean

June 6–8, 2016

Not so long ago, if you wanted to read The Odyssey, you needed several massive, expensive tomes: the original text, appendices of endnotes, maps, and family trees, maybe even a Greek dictionary. Today, thanks to digital humanists like Sarah Bond (Classics, CLAS) and Paul Dilley (Classics and Religious Studies, CLAS), you can access many classical texts online, for free, with notes about characters, historical figures, places, and words appearing as you mouse over the text, along with maps and network analyses.

Last year, in conjunction with an Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant, the two developed the project, Big Ancient Mediterranean (BAM), along with Ryan Horne (History, UNC–Chapel Hill). Though it doesn’t yet feature The Odyssey, the site offers information about a number of Latin texts, from Virgil’s Aeneid to Augustine’s Confessions.

Open-access projects like BAM—that is, free, open-source, publicly accessible online tools—have become essential to digital humanities research, as they allow scholars to collaborate easily and reach a broad audience. “If we’re using closed tools that only certain people can afford,” says Bond, “then our projects will be accessible only to a small group within the academy. Because BAM focuses on texts that a lot of people are interested in—for instance, the Bible—we want it to be public-facing and to integrate academics, students, and the general public.” Dilley adds that digital tools allow scholars to test old hypotheses as well as to generate new material and new perspectives, citing “distant reading” approaches that use algorithms to find patterns within and across texts.

To forge connections between BAM and other digital humanities projects and to give digital scholars working across fields an opportunity to share their expertise and establish best practices for their projects, including a common vocabulary for linked open data, the three organized a public conference, Linking the Big Ancient Mediterranean. The conference featured 11 scholars from across the world who have developed open-source projects that help scholars better study classical texts. These researchers shared their work with 15 fellow scholars of classics, geography, GIS, world languages and literatures, and the spatial humanities, discussing both the advantages and challenges of using linked open data in humanities research.

Twenty presentations covered everything from GIS, mapping, and 3D modeling to the development of open-access archives for literary correspondence and data related to the study of coins and currency.

Bond, Dilley, and Horne hope to publish the proceedings of the conference in an open-access online journal that would provide, in Dilley’s words, “a ‘cookbook,’ or set of instructions, for creating digital projects using linked open data related to the ancient world.” As for BAM, the three plan to use what they’ve learned to improve the usability of the site’s various modules—specifically, to redesign its visual interface and incorporate new functionality (e.g., innovative textual search features in BAM’s Iowa Canon of Latin Authors). They also plan to apply for NEH funding during the next academic year.

View the conference’s lively Twitter feed: page 1, page 2, page 3.

Seminar Participants

• Sarah Bond (Assistant Professor of Classics, CLAS, University of Iowa; Co-PI of BAM)
• Paul Dilley (Assistant Professor of Classics and Religious Studies, CLAS, University of Iowa; Co-PI of BAM)
• Tom Elliott (Associate Director of Digital Programs, ISAW-NYU, Managing Editor and Founder of the Pleiades Project)
• Elton Barker (Reader in Classical Studies, Open University; Community Director of the Pelagios Project)
• Gabriel Bodard (Reader in Digital Classics at University of London; SNAP:DRGN)
• Michael Satlow (Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies, Brown University, Director of IIP)
• Elli Mylonas (Senior Digital Humanities Librarian, Brown University; TEI Expert, Technical Director of IIP)
• Adam Rabinowitz (Associate Professor at UT-Austin, Archaeologist and director of PeriodO)
• Ryan Horne (Postdoctoral Fellow, UNC-CH, Technical Director at BAM)
• Tom Keegan (Head, Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, University of Iowa)
• Matt Butler (Senior Developer, Media Production & Design Work, Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, University of Iowa)
• Monica Berti (Assistant Professor of DH, Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities, University of Leipzig)
• Elizabeth Platte (Instructional Technologist at Reed College; Digital Humanities Specialist and Project Manager at Coptic Scriptorium)
• Caroline T.  Schroeder (Principal Investigator, Coptic Scriptorium, Professor of Religious and Classical Studies, University of the Pacific)
• David Michelson (General Editor, Syriaca.org, Assistant Professor, Divinity School, Vanderbilt University)
• Nico Dogaer (KU Leuven, Ancient History; Trismegistos Project)
• Sara Sprenkle (Associate Professor of Computer Science, Washington and Lee University; Technical Director, Ancient Graffiti Project)
• Ethan Gruber (Director of Data Science at the American Numismatic Society, Nomisma.org software creator)
• Sebastian Heath (Clinical Assistant Professor of Ancient Studies, ISAW-NYU)
• Tom Elliott (Associate Director of Digital Programs, ISAW-NYU; Managing Editor and Founder of the Pleiades Project)
• Stephanie Blalock (DH Librarian, Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, University of Iowa; Associate Editor of the Walt Whitman Archive)
• Kyle Johnson (Developer, Classical Language Toolkit)
• Hannah Scates Kettler (DH Librarian, Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, University of Iowa)
• Bob Cargill (Assistant Professor of Classics and Religious Studies, CLAS, University of Iowa)
• Ryan Baumann (Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing, Developer for Papyri.info)
• Samuel J. Huskey (Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics & Letters, University of Oklahoma; Director, Digital Latin Library)

View the full listing of speakers and events

Carnival as a Performative Art Form

Loyce Arthur (Theatre Arts, CLAS)
Armando Duarte (Dance, CLAS)

Brazilian Carnival artists have been strong social agents for community engagement through the parades that bring people of all social levels together for a one-of-a-kind experience. Professors Loyce Arthur and Armando Duarte have been working over the past four years to bring a similar experience to local and university communities. During Summer 2016, the two created carnival costumes and dances with local participants (see photo above of the Iowa City Carnival in June 2017). They discussed how Carnival costume and dance have influenced each other throughout history, their social and artistic meaning, and the practical methods used to make costumes and dances.

Heterogeneous Network Data Analytics to Improve Urban Sustainability

M. Zubair Shafiq (Computer Science, CLAS)
Xun Zhou (Tippie College of Business)

Modern urban systems are increasingly facing significant challenges in sustainable development due to a persistent increase in motor vehicles and population density. These changes may lead to higher fuel consumption, higher greenhouse gas emissions, and low efficiency in public services. The key task for city planners is to intelligently manage urban systems so as to minimize energy consumption and pollution, while maximizing the efficiency of the public service systems.

Using transport network data from New York City, Shenzhen, and Changsha, Shafiq and Zhou are working to design geospatial network mining algorithms for optimizing these cities’ urban transport systems in terms of traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emission, and urban mobility.

Since their summer residency, the two have published the following papers: 

• Amin Vahedian Khezerlou, Xun Zhou, Lufan Li, Zubair Shafiq, Alex Liu, and Fan Zhang. “A Traffic Flow Approach to Early Detection of Gathering Events: Comprehensive Results.” ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology. (In press)
• Xun Zhou, Amin Vahedian Khezerlou, Alex Liu, Zubair Shafiq, Fan Zhang. “A Traffic Flow Approach to Early Detection of Gathering Events.” Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2016).

The Influence of Age at Implantation on Sequential Learning Processes in Children with Cochlear Implants

Elizabeth Walker (Communication Sciences & Disorders, CLAS)
Hannah Pimperton (University College London, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience)

Cochlear implants allow children who are deaf to perceive speech, enabling them to acquire spoken language. Children who receive cochlear implants earlier in life tend to achieve better language outcomes than those who are implanted later. Walker and Pimperton are working to determine whether there is a relationship between age at implantation and learning efficiency in verbal, visual, and motor contexts, as well as the specificity of this relationship to language. They hope their efforts will contribute to our understanding of sensitive periods for language development, as well as the impact of auditory deprivation on domain general and domain specific aspects of learning. Clinically, their goal is to provide evidence that will inform decision making for parents and medical professionals regarding the optimum age for cochlear implantation in children who are congenitally deaf.

Walker and Pimperton currently have a manuscript in revision that they worked on at Obermann during their residency. Walker also received a two-year $75,000 grant from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation related to this project. The grant is titled “Investigating Links between Non-linguistic Learning Processes and Grammar Skills in Children with Cochlear Implants.”

The Meek and the Mighty: Exploring Diversity Programs among Big Ten Universities

Aislinn Conrad-Hiebner (School of Social Work, CLAS)
D. Martin Kivlighan (College of Education)
Elizabeth Menninga (Political Science, CLAS)

In the United States, college graduates experience better employment opportunities, increased income, and greater wealth than high school graduates. Despite the widespread benefits of attending college, universities have traditionally served students from White and middle- to upper-class backgrounds and have unsuccessfully retained diverse students, resulting in the further marginalization of underrepresented populations. In fact, it is estimated that six out of ten Black and Latino/a undergraduates at a four-year institution will fail to graduate. Recognizing a need for greater inclusion of and support for underrepresented students, universities have turned their attention to the development of diversity and cultural programs to both encourage greater diversity within the institution and provide supportive services to students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds. Although evidence suggests that greater diversity initiatives in higher education fosters students’ academic and social growth, little is known about the establishment and spread of these programs across universities. Therefore, this group’s research seeks to further explore processes and patterns of developing and implementing diversity and supportive programs, as well as the impact of these efforts on student and institutional outcomes.

During their residency, the group presented their preliminary findings and discussed their limitations with scholars conducting similar research at the UI’s Inequality Seminar on October 3, as well as considered how they might access the data needed to perform further social network analyses. The group hopes to submit a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal in the near future.

Read our article: “The Meek and the Mighty: Interdisciplinary Research Grant Explores Diversity Programs”

The January 2017 Graduate Institute occurred against a backdrop of questions about the role of higher education in a United States on the brink of a new presidency. Fellows seemed more eager than ever for their work to benefit a wider audience and to be actively involved in all of their communities.

For the second year, the Institute fellows visited the Johnson County Poor Farm and worked in small, interdisciplinary teams to propose possible projects that could be undertaken with a Poor Farm partner, such as Grow: Johnson County, which produces fresh food for local food banks, or Iowa Valley Global Food Project, which helps Iowa City immigrant populations learn small-scale farming techniques. The proposals were evaluated by our liaison with the Poor Farm, Shanti Sellz, Local Foods and Planning Specialist.

“The most rewarding experience I had at last year’s Graduate Institute was the opportunity to work with such a diverse and interesting group of scholars. As academics, it’s very easy for us to stay wrapped up in our own work—at least it is for me—and I appreciated the reminder that fascinating, passionate people can be found all over campus. I look forward to collaborating with them for the rest of my career.”

—Danielle Kennedy, Graduate Fellow (English, CLAS)

The Institute was co-directed by Jennifer Kayle (Dance, CLAS) and Tricia Zebrowski (Communication Sciences & Disorders, CLAS) with assistance from Graduate Senior Fellows Heidi-Renée Aijala (English, CLAS) and Diane Williams (American Studies and Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies, CLAS). The Senior Fellows are chosen from previous Institute classes and have an opportunity to learn program management skills, as well as help to edit the Institute’s content from year to year.

One change this year was having students work in intentionally “messy” interdisciplinary groups and propose an engaged project with the Poor Farm or one of its partners that would represent the scholarship of at least one team member. “I was impressed by the level of engagement with each Poor Farm group this year,” reflected Aijala. “The facilitators did a fantastic job of creating a clear assignment that helped guide participants to thoughtful and meaningful projects. Students found an authentic way to connect with their own interests and mutual skills, which made our meeting with the community partner smooth and useful for Shanti [Sellz] and for us.”

“One of the things about the Institute that will always stay with me is the transformative experience of discovering that there are options for the way that knowledge is created. Most of the students came to the week with an understanding of conventional models of scholarship and a research idea that didn’t fit into any of those. To watch them move from ‘I can’t do this’ to ‘How will I do this?’ over the course of the Institute was a teacher’s dream.”

—Tricia Zebrowski, Co-director

In addition to Sellz, guests to the Institute included Jacki Rand (History, CLAS), Rossina Liu (Language, Literacy, & Culture, College of Education), Jeannette Gabriel (Iowa Women’s Archives, UI Libraries), Jessica Anthony (Dance, CLAS), Theresa Jubert (UI Foundation), Anna Flaming (Center for Teaching), Thomas Keegan (Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, UI Libraries), Craig Just (Civil & Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering), and Wayne Jacobson (Office of Assessment).

2017 Directors and Senior Fellows

2017 Graduate Fellows

Select Working Group Highlights

Personalization Algorithms and Bias in Social Media Working Group

Co-directors: Tim Havens (Communication Studies and African American Studies, CLAS); M. Zubair Shafiq (Computer Science, CLAS) [Members of this group are pictured above.]

• Refined methods for studying how social media activity affects Google search results
• Experimented with a number of different iterations and failures, finally arriving at a workable model
• Presented preliminary findings at the International Communication Association conference in May.

Place-Based Inclusion Working Group

Director: Megan Gilster (School of Social Work, CLAS)

• Continued efforts to understand and advocate for university attention to affordable housing in the Iowa City community
• Secured funding to conduct a mixed-methods research study to examine the experiences of finding affordable housing among those at risk for housing instability
• Wrote several grants for internal funding and secured funding from the Office of Outreach and Engagement’s Community Impact grant ($10,000) to conduct a study of housing instability
• Brought Dr. Robin Bachin, Assistant Provost for Civic and Community Engagement and Associate Professor of History at the University of Miami, to Iowa City in April to present on her work connecting university resources to the problem of affordable housing in Miami

Comparative Ethnic Studies Working Group

Director: Deborah Whaley (American Studies and African American Studies, CLAS)

• Hosted Joseph Heathcott, Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the New School, in September. He presented a workshop with graduate students and faculty on crafting portfolios, non-traditional dissertations, and alternative careers. He also gave a standing-room-only public lecture titled “A Tale of Two Projects: Race, Neighborhood, and Design in the Twentieth-Century Post-Industrial City.”
• Brought Kevin Lam, Assistant Professor of Urban and Diversity Education at Drake University to campus to give a talk based on his book Youth Gangs, Racism, and Schooling: Vietnamese American Youth in a Postcolonial Context.

Contemporary Literary and Film Theory Working Group

Director: Kathleen Newman (Spanish & Portuguese and Cinematic Arts, CLAS)

This long-term working group read and discussed seven books. Members reported that the ideas raised by the group contributed to the creation of new courses and also contributed to book, article, and lecture content, including Elke Heckner’s (German, CLAS) book manuscript, Thinking Memories of Futurity: Holocaust, Genocide and 9/11, and Kathleen Newman’s (Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS) conference paper, “Transnational vs. Peripheral Modernity: Argentine Cinema in the 1920s,” which she delivered at the Latin American Studies Association International Congress in Lima, Peru.

Fossils and Farmland Working Group

Co-directors: Clar Baldus (Teaching & Learning, College of Education); Deanne Wortman (College of Engineering)

Using Cornell University mathematician Daina Taimina’s book Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, members of this group started a project to crochet Iowa’s extinct fossil past. The finger crochet technique can be done by children and is being developed by the group as a project that will combine art, math, and science to teach about geology and global warming.