Book Ends

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Books Ends—Obermann/OVPR Book Completion Workshop supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award helps faculty members turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Two faculty members held Book Ends workshops during 2020–21:

Tara Bynum (English and African American Studies, CLAS)
Workshop date: March 3, 2021
Book project: Reading Pleasures
Reading Pleasures examines those instances when black personhood—in eighteenth-century American colonies and the newly-founded U.S.—delights in individual and shared pleasures.
Readers: Matthew Brown, English, UI; Phil Round, English, UI; Derrick Spires, English, Cornell University; Katie Chiles, English, University of Tennessee

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Brady G’Sell (Anthropology and Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies, CLAS)
Workshop date: July 27, 2021
Book project: Producing Citizens: Motherhood, Race, and Political Belonging in South Africa
Producing Citizens analyzes the livelihood strategies of South African mothers living in poverty across five decades of political economic shifts. G’Sell demonstrates how the content of citizenship is created and negotiated at the micro-political scale of interpersonal relationships.
Readers: Naomi Greyser, GWSS, American Studies, and English, UI; Meena Khandelwal, GWSS and Anthropology, UI; Cati Coe, Anthropology, Rutgers University; Lynn Thomas, History, University of Washington