Upcoming Events

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective promotional image

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective

Friday, January 23, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This program offers accountability to artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of writing project (articles, essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, etc.) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.

In spring 2026, four writing groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St. Each group will meet once a week for 1.5 hours, beginning the week of...

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award promotional image

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award

Monday, February 2, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

The new Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award recognizes individuals or teams whose trajectories have engaged diverse disciplines to produce insights that would be unattainable within a single academic silo. These scholars cultivate collaborative work, fostering dialogue across academic fields and institutional units. Their research or creative work engages with foundational questions that resonate across society. By recognizing interdisciplinary excellence, the Obermann Center for...

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026)

Saturday, February 14, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Fall 2026 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 with...

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Tuesday, February 17, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

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

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

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...
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...

Recent Events

Frequências: Interventions by Miryam Charles and Aline Motta promotional image

Frequências: Interventions by Miryam Charles and Aline Motta

Friday, March 31, 2023 3:00pm to 4:15pm
Becker Communication Studies Building

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Please note that this event has been moved from the Stanley Art Museum to 101 BCSB.

With her artistic practice, Aline Motta (b. 1974, Niterói, Brazil) seeks to point out and fill in the gaps in her own family history as a result of colonial erasure. Her videos, photographs, installations, and performances are based on speculative studies that mix archival...

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Artist Talk by Aline Motta — "Bridges over the Abyss" promotional image

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Artist Talk by Aline Motta — "Bridges over the Abyss"

Friday, March 31, 2023 1:15pm to 2:45pm
Stanley Museum of Art

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award:. Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Following the opening of Brazilian visual artist Aline Motta’s exhibition at the Stanley Museum, the artist Aline Motta and Brazilian curator and scholar Tatiana Carvalho Costa will share their thoughts on the works exhibited and discuss the uses of speculative fiction and archive to piece together a possible family...

Pride Week: Trans Day of Visibility promotional image

Pride Week: Trans Day of Visibility

Friday, March 31, 2023 12:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Join us in the Pride Lounge (Iowa Memorial Union Room 209) from noon to 5 p.m. to spend time with community, honoring this important day. Follow our Instagram (@uiowapridehouse) for further TDOV engagement!

Frequências: Interventions by Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Michael B. Gillespie, and Cris Lira promotional image

Frequências: Interventions by Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Michael B. Gillespie, and Cris Lira

Friday, March 31, 2023 10:30am to 11:45am
Stanley Museum of Art

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Tatiana Carvalho Costa is a curator and teacher. She is a doctoral student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais where she researches Afro-Brazilian epistemologies and Black Brazilian Cinema, in particular the recent production of short films. She works as programmer and juror of festivals and recently joined the curatorial team of the Mostra de Cinema de...

Crosscurrents in Time: A Video Trilogy by Aline Motta (Exhibition) promotional image

Crosscurrents in Time: A Video Trilogy by Aline Motta (Exhibition)

Friday, March 31, 10:00am to Monday, July 31, 2023 4:30pm
Stanley Museum of Art

This multi-channel installation of three related videos will be on view in the Lauridsen Family Gallery at the Stanley Museum of Art. Aline Motta is a participant in Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora, an Oberman Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Project Award, held at the University of Iowa March 30 - April 1, 2023.

Among the Atlantic waters that connect Brazil, Portugal, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, contemporary artist Aline Motta engages with...

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award promotional image

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award

Friday, March 31 to Saturday, April 1, 2023 (all day)

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora

From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...