Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

The Research Development Office is hosting an in-person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Thursday, April 1, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This new Obermann Center program offers modest yet swift support for those portions of research and creative endeavors by UI scholars that are important toward advancing a project but do not have enough funding from other sources. We will grant 10 awards of $500 or less per academic year. Note that funds need to be spent by June 30 of each year.

Eligibility: Open to all University of Iowa faculty and staff researchers who have not received a SIP award in the past academic year.

Application...

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30)

Wednesday, April 7, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups led by faculty that may include advanced graduate students, staff members, and community members with a shared intellectual interest.

Groups have used this opportunity to share their work in progress or draw up a set of readings they want to undertake and discuss. Others have organized conferences, applied for grants together, written articles together, designed new courses, taken field trips, organized...

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News

Teachers and children in classroom

A Thousand Prospects for Research: A Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar Reflects

In late summer 2020, a new community initiative was formed in response to the impact of the pandemic on K12 students: Neighborhood NESTS. The Obermann Center responded by creating a new graduate research position, the Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar, to work with the initiative, providing program management and deepening the project through disciplinary research. In this article...

Brain Time: Rodica Curtu, Mathematical Biology, and the Perception of Time

Jenna Hammerich
For Rodica Curtu, math is a balm. In high school, when she’d get a headache, she’d sit down and solve math problems—“The opposite of what my friends would do!” she laughs. Now, as a professor in the Department of Mathematics (CLAS) and a member of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute, she uses mathematical analysis to help find treatments for people with debilitating brain disorders—specifically...
Eric Hirsch with two Peruvians, standing outdoors

Rural life, capitalism, and solidarity: Eric Hirsch on the challenges of climate change & entrepreneurship in highland Peru

Jenna Hammerich
Climate change is nothing short of a disaster for farmers in the Peruvian Andes. As one put it in a 2017 interview, “If the glaciers disappear, we’ll have to die.” With droughts becoming more frequent, Andean farmers are struggling to irrigate their crops and water their livestock; unpredictable weather has changed once-reliable patterns of plant growth; and occasionally, a “glacial lake outburst”...
participants in 1950s racial justice institute

Planning the UI College of Education Annual Summer Racial Justice Institute

In 1944, sociologist Charles S. Johnson launched the Fisk University Race Relations Institute (RRI), which ran until 1969. His goal was to identify the social, political, and economic policies and practices that limited opportunities for Blacks and other marginalized racial groups and contributed to racial unrest in the U.S. The RRI differed from the other estimated 400 organizations working to...

Heart Attack or Takotsubo Syndrome? An AI project seeks to differentiate

Jennifer New
Chest pain, shortness of breath, and an irregular EKG are hallmarks of a heart attack. However, some people exhibiting these symptoms may actually be experiencing takotsubo syndrome (TTS), a weakening of the left ventricle. The majority of cases of TTS, which is more prevalent in women, are caused by acute stress, such as unexpected loss, serious illness, intense fear, or a violent interaction...
The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa, 2021-22

The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa

On April 29, 2022, the University of Iowa will welcome a remarkable new tree to the Pentacrest: a sapling propagated from the old chestnut tree that grew behind the Amsterdam annex where Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II. Although the tree died a number of years ago--at an estimated 170 years old--it lives on through saplings that have been planted in such as places as the Boston...
Tracie Morris

Black Spring: Tracie Morris asks, "How did we get to here and where do we go from here?"

Jennifer New
As the culminating event in the Black Lives on Screen series that has spanned the spring semester, Tracie Morris (Iowa Writers' Workshop) is presenting a short filmic work with performance voice-over. Black Spring (in 5 parts) is cultural theory, cinema, poetry, protest art, and elegy. Like much of Morris's work, it is a hybrid that is not easily categorized. Resisting categories Morris is a poet...

Thinking in Images: The Evolution of Rachel Williams

Jennifer New
“I had to think in images.” This is how Rachel Williams explains her progression as the artist-author of two graphic histories who moved from illustrating the words of others to bringing a story to life on her own terms. A painter and art educator by training, Williams’s approach has always been multi-disciplinary. For her recently published books, Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The...

Cathy Park Hong Gives UI Keynote

In the first chapter of Cathy Park Hong’s creative nonfiction book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World, 2020), the reader is transported to Kalamazoo, where Hong gave a reading from an early draft of her book at Western Michigan University. At the end of the event some fans approach her, eager to share gratitude for her work and express how personal it is to them. Two audience...
Imagining Latinidades podcast logo

Sawyer Seminar Culminates with Latina/o/x Futurity

When COVID-19 interrupted the late spring events and culmination of the yearlong Mellon Sawyer Seminar Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging, we didn't know that the events would eventually end up online and across institutions. In 2019–20, seminar co-directors Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Ariana Ruiz, and Rene Rocha worked across disciplines to organize six symposia, a film series...
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Recent Events

Pandemic, State & Society Webinar Series promotional image

Pandemic, State & Society Webinar Series

Friday, September 18, 2020 8:00pm to 9:30pm
Virtual

Join International Programs, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Iowa Global Health Network for a special two-part webinar series "Pandemic, State & Society" (Sept. 18 & 25) bringing together voices from Asia to discuss firsthand experiences with the coronavirus.

Asia was the first place to experience the coronavirus, impose lockdowns, and then emerge from them. It was also the first to experience a resurgence of infection due to the...

Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: A conversation with Katina Rogers

Wednesday, September 16, 2020 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

In her new book, Putting the Humanities PhD to Work (Duke University Press, 2020), Katina Rogers invites readers to build a university that is truly worth fighting for by thinking more expansively about what constitutes scholarly success—not only to support individual career pathways, but also to work toward greater equity and inclusion in the academy. This book grounds practical career advice in a nuanced consideration of the academic workforce, diversity and inclusion, new modes of scholarly...

The Summer Internship for Humanities PhDs: A presentation by HPG interns promotional image

The Summer Internship for Humanities PhDs: A presentation by HPG interns

Tuesday, September 15, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Join us as Summer 2020 Humanities for the Public Good interns reflect on their experiences working with Eastern Iowa non-profits and University of Iowa units during Summer 2020. They will share the work they did and connect their learning experiences to their scholarship and future work.

REGISTER via Zoom to receive the meeting link.

Free and open to all.

Humanities Without Walls promotional image

Humanities Without Walls

Thursday, August 27, 2020 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced studies is proud to be a member of the 16-university Midwest consortium Humanities Without Walls, which is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. On Thursday, August 27, HWW will kick off their 2020-21 career diversity programming. In this virtual roundtable, you’ll hear from three HWW fellowship alumni about their experiences post-fellowship and how the Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop informed their career exploration and development.

This...

Addressing Equity in the Classroom Setting During Times of Change: Tools for Faculty promotional image

Addressing Equity in the Classroom Setting During Times of Change: Tools for Faculty

Friday, August 21, 2020 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

Title of Training:  "Addressing Equity in the Classroom Setting During Times of Change: Tools for Faculty"

Training overview:  The Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the nationwide protests following the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, have laid bare the racial disparities that exist in education, healthcare, political participation, and other systems in the United States. These disparities and inequities accompany students as they enter into the learning spaces at the...

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference) promotional image

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference)

Saturday, May 2, 2020 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this closing conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help wrap-up the yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” We make the turn to practices of performing and imagining Latinidades now and into the future by inviting leading scholars in the fields of Performance Studies, Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, and Latina/o/x Studies to participate in a closing conference. One set of speakers will discuss Latina/o/x cultural...

Canceled