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

First Iowa City Archive Crawl Celebrates Treasures in Local Collections

Hold History in Your Hands at the First-Ever Iowa City Archives Crawl What gems hide in plain sight in Iowa City’s libraries, museums, and archives? At the area’s first-ever archives crawl, visitors can snoop in between the pages of historic diaries, read other people's mail, hold feathers and fossils, and peer into mysteries revealed by historic artifacts like swords and locks of...
Graduate Institute participants doing a movement exercise

UI students learn the true meaning of public engagement

Thank you to Emily Nelson and Iowa Now for this article about the 2018 Obermann Graduate Institute Some scholars may consider giving a presentation, curating an exhibit, or hosting a medical screening for community groups to be a form of public engagement. Although each of these is an important contribution, the annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy encourages...
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...

Recent Events

Little Resurrections: Laboring to Find Wonder in Our Work — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Little Resurrections: Laboring to Find Wonder in Our Work — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, October 28, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Join a minister, a dancer, and a religious anthropologist for a conversation about social justice, the body's awe-inspiring movement, and the tension between the mundane and profound qualities of 21st-century labor.  

The past few months have shone an intense light on the demands of different forms of work. Americans are picking lettuce in the midst of nearby forest fires, chasing kindergartners while on Zoom work calls, and caring for COVID patients. Workers deemed "essential" are treated as...

Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice promotional image

Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Wednesday, October 14 to Saturday, October 31, 2020 (all day)
Virtual

Starting on October 4th and continuing through the month, Iowa Arts is sponsoring a series of events that bring arts and humanities together to explore a range of timely issues. The initiative, called “Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice,” includes music and theatre productions framed by discussions to place them in a social context. It also features conversations with distinguished faculty and guests about how the arts and humanities can inform medical practice and bring attention to complex...

Obermann Around the Table: Listening to the Past, Sharing Thoughts on the Present, Imagining a More Just Future promotional image

Obermann Around the Table: Listening to the Past, Sharing Thoughts on the Present, Imagining a More Just Future

Sunday, October 11, 2020 4:00pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is launching a new series entitled Obermann Around the Table--in honor of much missed in person conversations in our library. Our hope is that the series will provide a welcoming, nonjudgmental space in which colleagues, neighbors, and new friends can address difficult subjects that impact our communities and reflect on ways to move toward more just and generous communities.

In the first event of the series, we will reflect on the theme Finding Your...

Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy - Info Session

Tuesday, October 6, 2020 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Virtual

Learn and ask questions about the 2021 Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. The Obermann Center's Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellows, Dr. Laura Perry and Dr. Ashley Cheyemi McNeil, will lead the virtual session.

If you are interested in applying for the January 2021 Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy, please attend! Note that we are repeating this info session for those who could not attend the September 11 session.

Please register to receive the Zoom...

Pandemic, State & Society Webinar Series promotional image

Pandemic, State & Society Webinar Series

Friday, September 25, 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...

Info Session: Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop promotional image

Info Session: Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop

Thursday, September 24, 2020 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Join us for this virtual info session/Q&A about the 2021 Humanities Without Walls National Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop (July 19–August 6, 2021). The session will be led by Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum.

Register via Zoom to receive the meeting link.