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

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...
Jessica Pleyel ironing

Jessica Pleyel: Mending through Art

Jennifer New
Wax guns, duck decoys, and nail polish. These are some of the items in artist Jessica Pleyel’s community engagement toolkit. The Obermann Graduate Institute alumna is currently bringing audiences together to consider gun violence against women, especially by domestic partners. Her exhibition, To(get)her: Meeting/Melting/Mending, had a month-long run at the Des Moines Social Club this spring, and...

All in the Mix: Erica Damman's Environmental Games

Jennifer New
Remove the letter A from Scrabble and things get tricky pretty quickly. Likewise, remove apis melliferia, or the honeybee, from the world’s ecosystems and things start to fall apart. Almonds and apples, coffee and avocados—all become, if not extinct, then exceptionally rarer without bees to pollinate them. Industries that employ thousands of people are compromised. The food that sustains certain...

Summer Brings Russell Scholars, a pair of education projects, two arts projects, and digital collaborations to the Obermann Center

The Obermann Center will host multiple groups this summer, working on projects ranging from an edited anthology to a "film opera." The Philosophy of Physical Atomism is the focus of this year's Obermann Summer Seminar. These lectures, given by Bertrand Russell in the early months of 1918, were published in pairs in four issues...

Talking “Prophylactic Chats” with Fellow-in-Residence Edward Cohn

Jenna Hammerich
It's 1975, Lithuania. You receive a letter in the mail—brief, and on KGB letterhead. "You are invited to a friendly chat at our headquarters," it says. "Next Monday, 10 a.m." Gulp. These "chats"—frequent occurrences in Khrushchev-era Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—are the current fascination of Obermann Fellow-in-Residence Edward Cohn. A professor of history at Grinnell College, Dr. Cohn...

Humanities on the Hill 2017—with the National Humanities Alliance

Just as news was breaking that the proposed federal budget could zero out the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, I joined representatives from nearly 200 colleges and universities in Washington, D.C. for the 2017 National Humanities Alliance Advocacy Day. As the current secretary of the NHA Board of Directors, I know firsthand what...

The Making of "Hot Tamale Louie": Fantastical immigrant’s tale inspires multi-genre production

Jennifer New
Sometime between chemo and radiation, John Rapson was struck by inspiration. It came in the form of a New Yorker article. The long piece, “Citizen Khan” by Kathryn Schulz, is as meandering and rich as its subject: Zarif Khan. After reading the article last June, Rapson, a jazz professor in the School of Music, immediately knew that he’d found the subject for a new piece. Not only would it include...

Sara Goldrick-Rab's Feb. 13 college affordability talks available online

On February 13, 2017, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Higher Education Policy & Sociology at Temple University, visited the UI campus to discuss the crisis of college affordability and student loan debt. Both of her public lectures are now available online. Listen to Sara Goldrick-Rab's Inequality Seminar talk, “Making College Affordable: Adventures in Scholar-Activism.” Watch her lecture,...

Artistic director Michael Rohd to discuss cultivating community-centered arts April 5

Effective collaboration starts with something very simple: listening. Michael Rohd, Artistic Director of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and the Sojourn Theatre, will speak about his experiences collaborating with arts councils, service organizations, artists, community agencies, and local governments around the country to make space and context for meaningful, arts-based partnership...
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Recent Events

Obermann Around the Table: A View of Bilingual Education in Iowa promotional image

Obermann Around the Table: A View of Bilingual Education in Iowa

Wednesday, December 9, 2020 7:00pm to 8:15pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies has launched a new series called 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. We hope you'll come to listen and learn and stay to share your thoughts and...

Podcasting at Iowa and Beyond: Calling all podcasters, podcast fans, and podcast-curious at Iowa promotional image

Podcasting at Iowa and Beyond: Calling all podcasters, podcast fans, and podcast-curious at Iowa

Friday, December 4, 2020 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Virtual

Gather with the Humanities for the Public Good and the Obermann Center to talk all things podcast at the University of Iowa. Hosted by Laura Perry, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow with HPG and a former podcast editor and radio show host, this conversation will cover the wide world of podcasts, showcase exciting podcasts happening on our campus, as well as local resources to support podcasting. Plus, get a sneak preview and find out more about the upcoming HPG podcast series, which will bring together...

Book Talk with Rhondda Robinson Thomas, author of Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community promotional image

Book Talk with Rhondda Robinson Thomas, author of Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community

Monday, November 30, 2020 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

Join Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature, Clemson University, as she discusses her new book, Call My Name, Clemson: Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community, published this month by the University of Iowa Press. 

In the book, Professor Thomas traces her public history project, Call My Name: African Americans in Early Clemson University History, which helped convince Clemson University to reexamine and reconceptualize the institution’s...

Out in the Field: Finding Wonder under the Water, in the Ground, and on the Waves — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Out in the Field: Finding Wonder under the Water, in the Ground, and on the Waves — An Obermann Conversation

Monday, November 16, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Join us for another virtual Obermann Conversation!

Three researchers whose work takes them into the field reflect on the experience of being far removed from screens, phones, and what many of us associate with everyday work. George Peterson, the Director of Dive Programs at the Monterey Bay Sea Aquarium, shares his love of scuba and the discoveries he makes under the world's oceans as a way to provoke wonder in others and spur them toward conservation. Cynthia Chou, UI professor of Anthropology...

Abortion Care in America promotional image

Abortion Care in America

Thursday, November 12, 2020 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

What: Abortion Care in America
When: Thursday, November 12th, 4:30 pm Central  
Where: Webinar registration link: https://uiowa.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WKYdydtJQ-GzkzUhFgYb-g

About the talk: Professor Carole Joffe, sociologist and professor in the Ansirh  (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) program at UCSF and emerita from the University of California, Davis will join Lina-Maria Murillo, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and History at UI, and...

Get It Done: Working with Hancher in Spring 2021 promotional image

Get It Done: Working with Hancher in Spring 2021

Monday, November 9, 2020 12:30pm
Virtual

If you've ever passed by Hancher and felt a pang of desire to be part of a performance, you're not alone! We have asked our friends at this premier performing arts center to share their spring 2021 programming and to explain how you can continue to connect with arts programming at Hancher virtually—especially for teaching purposes. 

On Monday, November 9, from 12:30-1:30 p.m., Hancher's programming and education staff—Paul Brohan, Micah Ariel James, and Chuy Renteria—will give a snapshot of...