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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

Kate Kedley - Building Solidarity Between Honduras and Iowa

Artists Take Back Public Space in Honduras As Obermann Graduate Fellow in 2013, Kate Kedley learned to frame research as publicly engaged scholarship, and since then has continued to look for ways to remain in solidarity with the communities and people where she researches. Specifically, her dissertation is an ethnographic study about education and teaching in the Central American country of...

Beyond the Shiny New Toy—Next Frontier for Digital Humanities

Last summer, a group of three scholars commandeered the Obermann Center attic for a month with the goal of pushing their digital humanities (DH) project into a new phase. The team of Blaine Greteman (English, University of Iowa), James Lee (English, Grinnell College), and David Eichmann (School of Library and Information Science...

Teaching Sustainability—Across the Disciplines

Teach-in Focuses on Sustainability Curricula Across Campus Across the globe, people strive for sustainable development, which the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development famously defined as a way of living that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” How can the University of Iowa campus address the great...

Marilynne Robinson to Deliver Lecture, "The American Scholar Now"

As part of the Creative Matters series, Marilynne Robinson will give a lecture titled "The American Scholar Now," on December 9 from 5:30-6:30 pm at The Englert Theatre. This event is free and open to the public. Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Lila, winner of...

2016 Graduate Institute Fellows Announced

Seventeen UI graduate students from across campus, representing four different colleges, have been selected for the seventh annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. This year's co-directors, Craig Just (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Jennifer Kayle (Dance), and Senior Graduate Fellows Anna Swanson (Cinematic Arts and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies) and Jessica...

Diverse Voices "Write to Change the World" - The OpEd Project at the UI

Taking the Plunge in Public Writing — Women represent almost 50 percent of the world’s population. Why is it, then, that the range of voices heard in the world is incredibly narrow and comes from a tiny sliver of the population: mostly western, older, privileged, and overwhelmingly—85 percent!—male? University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Director Teresa Mangum wants to get...

Jessica Anthony: Graduate Institute Alumna Dances with and for the Underserved

Jessica Anthony is committed to using dance to tell previously silenced stories. A Visiting Professor in Dance, Anthony is currently co-directing Dancers in Company with fellow faculty member Michael Sakamoto, and the two are breathing new life into the 32-year old touring company. Dancers in Company has long held the mission of preparing University of Iowa dance students for the experience...
Don Quixote in Chinese

Don Quixote in 140 Characters

Can one of the world's most iconic books be boiled down to a Tweetable 140 characters? Don Quixote was parodied or plagiarized, depending on how you look at it, before Cervantes could even write the second volume chronicling the misadventures of an errant knight and his loyal sidekick. The 400-year old tome has inspired a plethora of adaptations, including ballets, symphonies, cartoons, films...

Summer Workshop Helps Humanities PhD Candidates Expand Options

Last July, two University of Iowa graduate students expanded their sense of how they might use their training as humanities scholars. Erica Damman (Environmental Humanities, CLAS) and Noaquia Callahan (History, CLAS) were part of the first cohort of graduate student Fellows to participate in the Alternative Academic Career Workshop for Pre-Doctoral Students in the Humanities. The Workshop is...
Ana Rodriguez and Denise Filios

Connecting 400-Year-Old Knight Errant to UI Students and Community

This fall, University of Iowa students are discovering the charms of an aged knight-errant, his earthy sidekick, and a cast of colorful characters. In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez and Denise Filios, professors in Spanish and Portuguese, are co-directing the Obermann–International Programs Humanities Symposium, “Parody, Plagiarism...

Recent Events

The Hong Kong Lit Scene: Writing, Translating, & Publishing, A conversation with Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Wong Yi, and Jennifer Feeley promotional image

The Hong Kong Lit Scene: Writing, Translating, & Publishing, A conversation with Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Wong Yi, and Jennifer Feeley

Wednesday, October 18, 2023 1:30pm to 3:00pm
English-Philosophy Building

Please join us for a panel discussion with three internationally recognized leaders on the Hong Kong literary scene as they share their experiences with writing, editing, translating, and publishing in Hong Kong, and the challenges of literary translation and publishing in a wider global context. Followed by Q&A.

Tammy Lai-Ming HO 何麗明 (Fall ‘23 IWP resident; poet, scholar, editor, translator; Hong Kong) is the author of a story collection, an academic monograph on neo...
Book Matters: The Theory of Being at Prairie Lights promotional image

Book Matters: The Theory of Being at Prairie Lights

Monday, October 16, 2023 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate The Theory of Being: Practices for Transforming Self and Communities Across Difference, edited by a research team including Sherry K. Watt, Duhita Mahatmya, Milad Mohebali, and Charles Martin-Stanley II.

Monday, Oct. 16, 2023
7-8:30 p.m.
Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

RSVP

The book presents a state-of-the-art, robust, and adaptable process, the Theory of Being, that offers strategies for...

2023 Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference promotional image

2023 Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference

Saturday, October 14 8:00am to Sunday, October 15, 2023 5:00pm
Lindquist Center

Learn more about the Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference at lsgsc.org

2023 Theme: Thriving in the Wilds

Last year we asked what we learned from the upheaval and changes the global pandemic triggered, and where the Learning Sciences would go from there. This year we ask a new question:

​What does it mean to thrive, instead of just surviving?

LSGSC is a gathering of emerging voices in the field of Learning Sciences. All graduate student work is welcome at LSGSC, but this year, we are...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2024) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2024)

Wednesday, October 11, 2023 5:00pm

The 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 or four 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...

Contemporary Approaches to Shakespeare promotional image

Contemporary Approaches to Shakespeare

Wednesday, October 11, 2023 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

2023 is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first collected edition of his works, and the first publication ever of plays including Macbeth and The Tempest. Why are we still reading and performing his works all these years later? How do we situate Shakespeare’s plays in a contemporary context? Join us for a roundtable discussion on Shakespeare in the 21st century. At this conversational panel, scholars will discuss Shakespeare in the context of race, prisons, and contemporary...

Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture-Jane Smiley promotional image

Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture-Jane Smiley

Thursday, October 5, 2023 7:00pm to 8:00pm
University of Iowa Main Library

The Department of English welcomes Ida Cordelia Beam Speaker, Jane Smiley, to speak on Thursday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m.
Jane is a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and alumni of the University of Iowa's Department of English.
A reception will follow.

Her visit is made possible with the support of the Provost's office and the Department of English.