Teresa Mangum & Anne Valk, series editors

The Humanities and Public Life book series is a collaboration with The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. The center is an intellectual community that serves artists, scholars, and researchers and seeks to build bridges to connect the University of Iowa campus with local and national communities by supporting publicly engaged arts, scholarship, research, and teaching.

The 21st century is ushering in an exciting new era of imaginative, interdisciplinary collaborations among academic, local, and global partners. This series spotlights the work of artists, scholars, and activists immersed in publicly-engaged projects in which the humanities, arts, and culture inspire community building and civic change. Part exhibition, part documentary, part advice, and part reflection on failures, successes, and possible futures, this series introduces innovative forms of humanities scholarship emerging across the world as many-layered, long-term, complex projects. The goal of the series is to capture significant publicly-engaged arts and humanities collaborations from the perspectives of faculty, students, community members, and organizational partners. The Humanities and Public Life meets a pressing need of current and future publicly-engaged scholars and partners: documenting projects that model rigorous work, critical thinking about best practices, and strategies for assessing the value and impact of public art, design, and scholarship.

Advisory Board

• Myrna Breitbart, Hampshire College, Professor of Geography and Urban Studies, founding member of the Holyoke Planning Network
• Jan Cohen-Cruz, Director of Imagining America and Syracuse University, University Professor, Theatre
• Matthew Countryman, University of Michigan, Director, University of Michigan's Arts of Citizenship Program, Associate Professor of American History and Public History
• Gregory Jay, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Founding Director, Cultures and Communities Program, Professor, English and American Studies
• Lisa Yun Lee, Director, Jane Addams—Hull House Museum and University of Illinois-Chicago
• Ana Lopez, Tulane University, Associate Professor and Associate Provost of Communication, Director of the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute, Latin American Studies, Film Studies
• Tara McPherson, University of Southern California, digital humanities
• Rachel Williams, University of Iowa, Community-based Arts, Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies, Intermedia, Prison Arts Projects
• Kim Yasuda, University of California Santa Barbara, Co-director, U.C. Institute for Research in the Arts, Spatial Studies, Public Arts Research, Administration, and Practice

Guidelines for proposals

Please send inquiries and proposals to Teresa Mangum and Anne Valk.