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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027)

Friday, September 18, 2026 11:59pm
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2027 Obermann International Fellowships. This program offers dedicated space, time, and funding for interdisciplinary scholars to collaborate on innovative research at the University of Iowa. Up to eight international fellowships will be granted every academic year. Applicants must be active researchers at an accredited institution of higher learning outside of the United States or independent researchers/artists...

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books Ends supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist UI faculty members with significant research responsibilities turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500 honorarium for two external...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

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...

News

Graduate Students Build Campus-Community Connections, Explore New Careers in Summer Internships

For nine graduate students at the University of Iowa, this was not the summer internship they had anticipated. Unlike summer 2019, this second summer of the Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internship program came with many unexpected twists and challenges. As the University of Iowa moved to virtual learning, interns joined partner organizations and took on new responsibilities just as many of...

Graduate Students Build Campus-Community Connections, Explore New Careers in Summer Internships

For nine graduate students at the University of Iowa, this was not the summer internship they had anticipated. Unlike summer 2019, this second summer of the Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internship program came with many unexpected twists and challenges. As the University of Iowa moved to virtual learning, interns joined partner organizations and took on new responsibilities just as many of...
Pandemic, State, and Society logo

Pandemic, State & Society Highlights Voices from Asia

Last winter, as news about a new virus that was first reported in China in December began to dominate headlines, two University of Iowa faculty members began discussing the cultural repercussions and historical echoes of what was happening. Shuang Chen, a professor of history who studies late imperial and modern China, reached out to Cynthia Chou, director of the UI’s Center for Asian and Pacific...

Uneasy Stories: Mary Lou Emery Explores the Paradoxical Cultural History of the Bungalow

The bungalow has long seemed an ideal home. It's moderate in scale, built with deep porches or verandas that both invite time outdoors and seem to welcome neighborly visits. Even the word “bungalow” conjures up such coziness that a trendy house-sharing app borrowed it for its name. In 20th-century literature and film, however, the bungalow is frequently the site of scandal and violence, which...

HPG Summer 2020 Internship Program: Final Report

In June and July, 2020, nine University of Iowa (UUI) graduate students from the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Education worked with six public-facing organizations as interns. It was the second summer of the Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internship program, which is one part of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded grant program administered by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

Mini Grants to Bring Virtual Guest Speakers to Your Class

APPLICATION Are you teaching an undergraduate or graduate course that features work by a colleague outside the University of Iowa? Do you have a colleague from another discipline who could bring a thought-provoking cross-disciplinary perspective to an issue you’re addressing in your course? Or would you like to invite a practitioner or an expert from the public sector whose perspective would...
Laura Perry with dog

Laura Perry Joins Obermann

Laura Perry is joining the Obermann Center staff for the next two years as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow with the Humanities for the Public Good project. Born in Southern California, Laura recently received her doctoral degree in Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin­-Madison. In addition to serving as the managing editor of the digital magazine Edge Effects, she was a project assistant...

Humanities Without Walls Consortium Awarded Mellon Grant Renewal

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been awarded a $5 million grant renewal from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its Humanities Without Walls (HWW) initiative at the Humanities Research Institute (HRI). Now a 16-member consortium of universities, including the University of Iowa, HWW fosters collaborative research and explores the contributions of humanities in the workplace...

Healing the Academy: HuMetricsHSS trains scholars, administration in values-based metrics

“Sacrifice?” “Out!” shouts someone at a table to vehement nods. “Generosity?” “In!” another table cheerfully declares. Humane metrics In ways we couldn’t have anticipated, a workshop collaboratively hosted earlier this year by the Obermann Center, the Vice President for Research, International Programs, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was valuable preparation for a campus engaging in...
Dominic Dongilli

Meet Dominic Dongilli: HPG's New Graduate Research Assistant

Introducing the 2020–21 Humanities for the Public Good Graduate Research Assistant Arriving at the University of Iowa in Fall 2018 to begin his graduate studies, Dominic Dongilli knew that he wanted to participate in his new community in multiple ways. It was not going to be only about the library and classes. With that intention in mind, he applied for the new Humanities for the Public Good...

Recent Events

Political Activism Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Political Activism Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Saturday, September 23, 2023 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Panel #2: Political Activism

Travers (Simon Fraser University): “Trans Participation in Sport: The Fight to Include Us in Public Life” Douglas Hartmann (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities): "Documenting and Rethinking the Impact of Protest through Sport: The Case of WNBA Activism in the 2020 Georgia Senate Race" Jason Kido Lopez (University of Wisconsin, Madison): "Constructing Crisis in Women’s Sports: Outkick’s 'Anti-Woke' Sports Media Brand"

There will be a break from noon to 1 p.m.

...
Athletes and Resistance Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Athletes and Resistance Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Saturday, September 23, 2023 10:30am to 12:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Panel #3: Athletes and Resistance

Adrian Burgos (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): "In Clemente's Wake: Afro-Latino Ballplayers and the Quest for Respect"

Noah Cohan (Washington University, St. Louis): “Raising a Glass Helmet: How Black Athletes and Artists Resist Football’s Head Gear”

Jaime Schultz (Penn State University): "Consumed: On Women, Distance Running, Disordered Eating, and Illness Narratives"

Moderated by Glenn Houlihan, a PhD student in American...

Publishing Fair and Reception - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Publishing Fair and Reception - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Friday, September 22, 2023 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building

In addition to snacks and drinks, this informal reception will include booths from university presses that publish work on sport.

This event is a part of the Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium. 

Free and open to all.

'I Was Raised on this Sport: Football and Female Expertise' Keynote Address - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

'I Was Raised on this Sport: Football and Female Expertise' Keynote Address - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Friday, September 22, 2023 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Stanley Museum of Art

How can the history of activism in sports help us understand the dynamics shaping conflicts today? How might labor relations in sport be imagined differently? How does the structure of sporting entertainment provide opportunities and obstacles to activism, and how can activists navigate these challenges?

As fans flock to sports arenas to cheer for their favorite teams, these spaces are simultaneously important societal battlegrounds. From acts of political protest by players to legislative...

Imagining Belonging Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Imagining Belonging Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Friday, September 22, 2023 10:15am to 1:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Welcomes and Panel #1: Imagining Belonging

Michael Butterworth (University of Texas, Austin): "The Team That United a City: On Sports Documentaries and the Rhetorical Construction of Unity" Theresa Runstedtler (American University): "Black vs. White Ball: Race and the 1974 NBA Finals" Ashley Brown (University of Wisconsin, Madison): “A Patriot’s Game: Tennis, Physical Fitness, and ‘Good Citizenship’ during World War II” Abraham Kahn (University of Arkansas): “Sundays and Saturdays: Brian...
Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall promotional image

Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall

Friday, September 22, 2023 10:00am to 4:00pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies & the Office of the Vice President for Research present Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall, a daylong online writing retreat for faculty, academic staff, and graduate students across the UI, led by Michelle Boyd, PhD, of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats.

This full-day online writing retreat offers an opportunity to set up your fall writing plans. You'll learn how to quickly clarify what needs to be done, what to do...