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 them with the opportunity to enrich a single,
discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a
lively intellectual community of Fellows.
Following are highlights of the work of this year’s Fellows-in-Residence:
Loyce Arthur (Theatre Arts, CLAS):
- Researched the social and cultural interactions between ethnic groups in Trinidad and Tobago and how these interactions play out in annual Carnival activities
- Prepared an interview of New Orleans Black Indian Chief Darryl Montana for publication (July 2018)
- Developed a performance piece based on the themes of Caribbean migration, Carnival, and the Diaspora
- Developed content for the Carnival/Carnaval website under the UI Libraries Digital Archive
“My time at Obermann was invaluable. To have a dedicated space and time to pursue any lines of inquiry that I wanted to follow allowed me to accomplish a great deal and to plan for future professional and academic work in a focused way that is not possible during a regular semester. I also really appreciate the range of scholarly interests and backgrounds of fellow scholars that allowed for great wide-ranging formal and informal conversations.” —Loyce Arthur
Glenn Ehrstine (German, CLAS):
- Completed “Devotional Spectatorship in Late Medieval Germany” chapter of book manuscript and archival research for another chapter
- Completed an annotated translation of “Die Prohibitionsseuche in Iowa,” an outgrowth of the 2016 Obermann Humanities Symposium, German Iowa and the Global Midwest; the translation has been accepted for publication in The Annals of Iowa
- Completed a book review for the German journal Das Literaturwissenschaftliche Jahrbuch
Blaine Greteman (English, CLAS)
- Completed two chapters of a book-in-progress, Networking Early English Print, which is based on his digital project, Shakeosphere: Mapping Early Modern Social Networks
- Wrote a chapter for an edited collection to be published by Oxford University Press
- Wrote an article, “The Creep of the Nutcracker,” for The Week, which brought together some of his research and teaching interests
Matthew Hannah (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow)
- Completed and submitted a book proposal for his manuscript Networks of Modernism: Toward a Theory of Cultural Production
- Helped develop an online archive, The Modernist Archives Publishing Project
- Hired as Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at Purdue University, where he is helping to design a digital humanities center to serve the entire campus
Carolyn Copps Hartley (Social Work, CLAS)
-
Conducted a preliminary study of the sexual misconduct adjudication process used by colleges and universities to develop a grant proposal to examine the experiences of complainants and respondents involved in these processes
Sarah R. Kyle (Humanities and Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma)
- Researched and wrote a chapter of her current book project, The Mirror and the Key: the Roccabonella Herbal and Pharmacology in Renaissance Venice, and also a journal article
- Traveled to the Newberry Library to do research in its collection of manuscripts and early printed books
- Presented at two conferences and gave an invited lecture on material related to her book project
- Revised a chapter now forthcoming in an edited volume
Kim Marra (Theatre Arts and American Studies, CLAS)
- Created a digital video project, “The Pull of Horses,” which synthesizes archival and live performance sources into a large-format, immersive, 30- to 40-minute video to show a broad public how horses shaped gender and other human identities along with the urban landscape in New York City from 1860 to 1920
- Made presentations and participated in discussions in two classes at Grinnell College on the subject of equestrian shows in nineteenth-century New York City and archives, autobiographical performance, and digital storytelling
- Gave a talk, “Maude Adams, Actress and Equestrienne,” at Stephens College in Columbia, MO
- Finished and presented a talk, “David Belasco and The Passion for Actress Training,” at the Performance, Culture, and the Book Conference at the University of Iowa
Mirzam Pérez (Mellon Digital Bridges Fellow, Grinnell College)
- Completed revisions for and published the Designing Empire website
- Completed a graduate-level course, Digital Design for Art Books, during which she learned the basics of bookbinding, assembling, and layout in analog and digital format; created four original books; and learned Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign
- Created a dummy sample for graphic novel The Dead Professor
- Collaborated with student Alex Claycomb to write an article based on pedagogic experiences in advanced Spanish seminar that included a digital humanities mentor and the inclusion of digital assignments in text analysis, mapping, and online exhibits
Darrel Wanzer-Serrano (Communication Studies and Latina/o Studies, CLAS)
- Completed research for current book project on rhetorics of “possession” in the context of U.S. entanglement with Puerto Rico, 1898–1917
- Began work on a new project about Black Lives Matter; co-wrote an abbreviated version of the piece and presented it at the National Communication Association convention
- Began work on a project related to Puerto Rican rejection of U.S. citizenship
- Developed materials for an interdisciplinary graduate course on the rhetoric of race/racism
Jessica Welburn Paige (Sociology and African American Studies, CLAS)
- Worked on book manuscript, Die Hard City: Public Sector Contraction and the Experiences of African Americans in Detroit
- Won a DuBois Institute fellowship at Harvard University for Fall 2018, which is directed by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and hosts researchers at all career phases that explore the experiences of members of the African diaspora around the world
-
“The work I did on my book manuscript as a fellow at the Obermann Center was crucial in developing my application for the DuBois Institute fellowship. I was able to use the work I did to provide writing samples from my manuscript and an overview of the project.” —Jessica Welburn Paige
Pamela Wesely (Teaching & Learning, College of Education)
- Recruited 15 teacher participants for CDA project, conducting interviews with them and carrying out 30 full-day observations at schools around Iowa to collect data
- Wrote several manuscripts, including revising a second edition of a book (to be published in November 2018), two article manuscripts submitted in the spring semester, and four other manuscripts in progress
- Presented two papers at the American Association of Applied Linguistics conference in Chicago
The Obermann Summer Seminar is an opportunity for UI faculty members to lead a major collaborative project 
The 2018 Obermann Humanities Symposium and Provost’s Global Forum, “
shared
their mission and the challenges of providing low-cost literacy
services to area students during a session at Mark Twain Elementary
School’s Before and After School Program. Another IYWP partner, the
Antelope Lending Library, was also on hand to share their work. Working
in quartets, the Fellows proposed projects that met the challenges the
IYWP’s leadership had shared. Each project showed attentive listening to
the real needs of the organization, while also highlighting the
students’ skills. One project, which focuses on providing equipment,
training, and curricula for oral history, was funded by the Office of
Outreach and Engagement and is being carried out in summer and fall 2018
by Aiden Bettine (History, CLAS) and John Jepsen (History, CLAS).
Obermann Center 
The following publications completed with assistance from Obermann programming were reported in the last year:
The
Obermann Center welcomes the opportunity to support events that further
our mission—promoting research and creative work, facilitating publicly
engaged art and scholarship, and building intellectual
community. University of Iowa faculty members may request
small, discretionary grants to fund opportunities such as visiting
speakers and conferences.
The
Obermann Center supports the DeLTA Center’s projects in the area
of children’s learning and development through the Laura Spelman
Rockefeller grant.