Upcoming Events

Application Deadline: Faculty Book Proposal Workshop with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Application Deadline: Faculty Book Proposal Workshop with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 9, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

For this workshop, five UI faculty members will submit book proposal drafts for a collaborative feedback session on Wednesday, Oct. 7, from 9 a.m. to noon, led by Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press. The session is designed to help authors write a compelling book proposal, with a focus on crafting a strong pitch, identifying target audiences, and outlining the project’s structure. The workshop’s goal is for participants to walk away with a strong and cohesive book...

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression promotional image

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression

Saturday, September 26, 2026 3:00pm
Voxman Music Building

“Eleanor Waltzes” honors First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt through performances of songs and poetry created and sent to her by American women. The event will also feature an exhibit of materials from the Iowa Women’s Archives and a “making do” reception with 1930s recipes. “Eleanor Waltzes” is part of Sounding the Nation at 250, a series of commemorative concerts surrounding the U.S. Semiquincentennial sponsored by the Society for American Music.

Saturday, September 26, 2026, 3 pm

Recital Hall, Voxman...

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

UI faculty, students, and staff are invited to attend ask-me-anything group discussions with Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press—at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 1 at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Questions might address finding an editor, pitching a book, writing a book proposal, how the publishing process works, etc.

There will be two back-to-back discussions; you may attend one or both.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, September 30.

Free and open to all.

Bi...

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

University of Iowa junior faculty and graduate students at all stages are invited to join Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at the University of Pennsylvania Press—for a light breakfast and a conversation about turning an article, thesis, or dissertation into a book on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 9–10:30 a.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies library. Please bring any questions you have about that process or about scholarly publishing in general.

Register by Wednesday, September 30.

Biggins is...

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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 of all ranks and with significant research responsibilities to turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

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

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: 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...

News

Exhibit of backpacks found along the Mexican border

The Archeology of Ten Minutes Ago: Preserving the Artifacts of Border Crossing

Across campus and community, you’ll be seeing the poster for our upcoming symposium, Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice. We wanted a powerful image to anchor our communications for this event—one that captures the urgency and importance of archiving in today’s political climate, especially in the name of human rights. Living, breathing archives, uncomfortable, incriminating...

UI’s Iowa Native Spaces project works with Meskwaki, Ioway to bring historical perspectives to more Iowans

Reprinted from Iowa Now, this article features a project that was incubated via the Obermann Working Group program and has been directed by Jacki Rand (History, CLAS) who has been an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and Co-Director of the Obermann Graduate Institute, as well as former Graduate Institute Fellows Eric Zimmer and Dave De La Tore and Obermann HASTAC Scholar Mary Wise. Article by Chris...
Iowa City Archives Crawl logo

Iowa City Archives Crawl - Hold History in Your Hands!

On Saturday, February 24, Iowa City hosts its first archives crawl. You'll hold history in your hands. Get behind-the-scenes tours of local museums and libraries. Talk to experts who can help you with your own home-archiving projects. And learn about projects that scholars and artists are currently creating from the impressive archival holdings of local institutions. Between 11:00 am and 3:00...

February Digital Bridges Events

Two spring events hosted by our Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Save the dates for next spring! February 2 and 3: How to Harvest History, A talk and workshop with Rebecca Wingo, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Liberal Arts at Macalester College (PhD, History, University of Nebraska...

Typewriters for Eskimos: Imperialist Rhetoric & Puerto Rico

In 1898, soon-to-be U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge (R-Indiana) urged his fellow Congressmen to “administer government” to the “savages and senile peoples” of Puerto Rico, newly acquired by the U.S. “Shall we save them from [possession by other nations],” he cried, “to give them a self-rule of tragedy? It would be like giving a razor to a babe and telling it to shave itself. It would be like giving...
Christopher Newfield

Colliding Art Forms and Documenting Refugees: The Iphigenia Project

“We don’t collaborate, we collide!” declares Irina Patkanian as she sits down for a conversation with fellow artists Lisa Schlesinger and Marion Schoevaert to discuss their Iphigenia Project and its culminating piece, Iphigenia at Lesvos: Story of a Refugee. The project has been unfolding for several years and reflects not only current world events, but the three women’s process-oriented working...

Colored Conventions Project - Lecture & Workshop with Gabrielle Foreman

Gabrielle Foreman Visit, November 5-7, 2017 — As part of Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership, a multi-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support collaborative practices in the humanities, digital humanist Gabrielle Foreman will visit the University of Iowa and give a public lecture and a digital humanities workshop....

Introducing Our Fall 2017 Fellows

Blaine Greteman, English, CLAS Greteman is at work on a book, Networking English Print, which draws from his digital humanities project, Shakeosphere: Mapping Early Modern Social Networks. After mining the publication history of nearly every book printed in English before 1800, Greteman and his collaborators mapped the connections between printers, authors, publishers, and booksellers. By...

Incarcerate. Educate. Integrate. Prisoner access to education focus of September conference and new speaker series

In a recent meeting between prospective students and University of Iowa faculty, questions came up that sounded pretty routine: “Am I going to get credit for this?” “Will there be homework?” “What’s the time commitment?” These weren’t incoming freshman, however, but a group of men currently incarcerated at the Iowa Medical & Classification Center (“Oakdale”) in Coralville, IA. They were...

2018-19 Program Dates and Application Deadlines

FALL APPLICATION DEADLINES Obermann Center Fellows-in-Residence, Spring 2018 Application deadline: Sept. 12, 2017 The Obermann Fellows-in-Residence program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...

Recent Events

Podcasting with Purpose: Annie Galvin promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: Annie Galvin

Thursday, January 28, 2021 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Calling all podcasters, podcast enthusiasts, and podcast newbies! Learn from expert podcasters about the craft of podcasting with purpose, from the nuts and bolts of recording and editing audio to the intellectual and creative labor of audio storytelling. As part of our goal to prepare graduate students for a wide range of careers serving the public good, Humanities for the Public Good is exploring new and innovative methods of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making. The Podcasting...

Cultural Postmortem 2020 promotional image

Cultural Postmortem 2020

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 4:30pm
Virtual

How can artists and scholars help the nation contend with the peril in which we find ourselves—starting with our own campuses? The 2020 US presidential race was one of the most politically and ideologically divisive and contentious races that we’ve ever seen. And as the events of January 6, 2021 have illustrated, the nation remains divided to the point where political leaders at the highest level are challenging election results without any evidence or basis in reality and a largely white group...

Institute for Teaching with Writing promotional image

Institute for Teaching with Writing

Thursday, January 21, 2021 10:00am
Virtual

This series of four two-hour workshops is an introduction to teaching with writing. Topics include creating engaging writing assignments, responding to student writing efficiently and effectively, and using informal writing and peer workshops. Registration now open

NOTE: All instructors welcome, but this series is primarily designed for instructors teaching content-oriented courses (i.e. courses in the social sciences, history, art, philosophy, and the natural sciences) rather than writing...

Institute for Teaching with Writing promotional image

Institute for Teaching with Writing

Tuesday, January 19, 2021 10:00am
Virtual

This series of four two-hour workshops is an introduction to teaching with writing. Topics include creating engaging writing assignments, responding to student writing efficiently and effectively, and using informal writing and peer workshops. Registration now open

NOTE: All instructors welcome, but this series is primarily designed for instructors teaching content-oriented courses (i.e. courses in the social sciences, history, art, philosophy, and the natural sciences) rather than writing...

Food Insecurity in Johnson County: An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Food Insecurity in Johnson County: An Obermann Conversation

Thursday, January 14, 2021 7:00pm
Virtual

As of five years ago, about 14% of Johnson County residents were considered food insecure, meaning that they had limited or uncertain access to certain and nutritious food. After nearly a year of COVID-19 affecting employment and housing, those numbers are much greater. In this conversation, Obermann Center Teresa Mangum will talk with panelists about how food insecurity is experienced by UI students, children and families in our local schools, and others who are grappling with this urgent issue...

Institute for Teaching with Writing promotional image

Institute for Teaching with Writing

Thursday, January 14, 2021 10:00am
Virtual

This series of four two-hour workshops is an introduction to teaching with writing. Topics include creating engaging writing assignments, responding to student writing efficiently and effectively, and using informal writing and peer workshops. Registration now open

NOTE: All instructors welcome, but this series is primarily designed for instructors teaching content-oriented courses (i.e. courses in the social sciences, history, art, philosophy, and the natural sciences) rather than writing...