Working Groups and Special Collaborations

Our Working Groups welcome more than a hundred scholars into the Obermann community, including graduate students and thought leaders from the greater Iowa City community. These groups workshop each other’s writing, read across disciplines together in order to establish common ground, plan short symposia, and host visiting speakers. Each group meets a minimum of once a month throughout the year, creating small oases for exploring and learning with colleagues around a shared passion.

Learn more about our Working Groups and Special Collaborations.

Language of Aging: Directors—Jean K. Gordon (Communication Sciences & Disorders, CLAS) and Michelle Buhman (Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center)

Scholarship of Public Engagement: Director—Carolyn Colvin (Teaching & Learning, College of Education)

Performance Studies: Directors—Jennifer Buckley (English and Rhetoric, CLAS), Rebekah Kowal (Dance, CLAS), and Kim Marra (Theatre Arts and American Studies, CLAS)

Narrative in the Clinic and the Classroom: Director—Pat Dolan (Rhetoric and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies, CLAS) — Narrative in the Clinic and the Classroom: Director—Pat Dolan (Rhetoric and Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies, CLAS)

Humanities for the 21st Century: Directors—Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez (Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS) and Blaine Greteman (English, CLAS)

History Corps: Public Engagement in a UI Humanities Department: Director—Jacki Rand (History, CLAS)

18th- & 19th-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium: Director—Eric Gidal (English, CLAS)

Crossing the Social/Biological Divide: Directors—Sarah Harkness (Sociology, CLAS), Maurine Neiman (Biology, CLAS), Emily Wentzell (Anthropology, CLAS), and Deirdre Egan (Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, CLAS)

Contemporary Literary & Film Theory: Director—Kathleen Newman (Cinematic Arts and Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS)

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

Comic Studies: Director—Corey Creekmur (English, Cinematic Arts, and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies, CLAS) — Comic Studies: Director—Corey Creekmur (English, Cinematic Arts, and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, CLAS)

Creativity and Aging: Saving the Legacy: Director—Anita Jung (Art & Art History, CLAS)

Circulating Cultures: Director—Anny D. Curtius (French & Italian, CLAS)

Special Collaborations

Opera Studies

Led by Roberta Marvin, the University of Iowa’s Opera Studies Forum is a Collaborative Program within the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. We offer a variety of lectures and activities which are free and open to all members of the University and beyond. Please explore our site (via the drop-down menus above), where you can learn about our purpose and history, view archived events, and see what other resources are available with regard to opera.

POROI—The Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry

Led by Naomi Greyser (Rhetoric, CLAS), POROI is a special collaborative partner with the Obermann Center, and we are delighted to host their unique research seminars. This year, Frank Durham (Journalism & Mass Communication, CLAS) discussed his article, “The ‘Public’ and the Press: Lippmann, the Interchurch World Movement, and the 1919–20 Steel Strike,” which was later awarded First Place Faculty Paper by the Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association of Educators of Journalism and Mass Communication. “The POROI seminar really made the difference,” said Durham. In the second seminar, Deborah E. Whaley (American Studies and African American Studies, CLAS) presented a draft proposal for her third book project, “Feeling Her Fragmented Mind: Women, Race, and Dissociative Identity in Popular Culture.” POROI also co-sponsored University of Illinois Professor David Cisneros’s visit and presentation, “Proud to Be an American: Affect and Emotion in Immigration Rhetoric,” with the Comparative Ethnic Studies Working Group.

Obermann Center 2014–15 Annual Report

A year of imaginative collaborations and multidisciplinary exploration

Working Groups and Special Collaborations

Special Collaborations

Opera Studies

POROI—The Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry