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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

Exhibition Spotlight: DESIGNED TO WIN Virtual Exhibit Tour and Q&A promotional image

Exhibition Spotlight: DESIGNED TO WIN Virtual Exhibit Tour and Q&A

Monday, February 15, 2021 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual
About the event:

Join the Pentacrest Museums for an Exhibition Spotlight as we debut our latest virtual exhibit with the help of special guest and collector, J. Patrick White. Designed to Win: An Examination of Presidential Political Buttons features the private collection of J. Patrick White who brings a wealth of knowledge on American presidents and their campaigns through these small-but-mighty buttons designed to win the presidency of the United States. We invite you to an exhibit...

Humanities Without Walls Info Session promotional image

Humanities Without Walls Info Session

Monday, February 15, 2021 8:30am to 9:30am
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is proud to be a member of the Andrew W. Mellon–funded Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium, which fosters collaborative research and explores the contributions of humanities in the workplace.

HWW has provided the Obermann Center funding to help UI faculty prepare proposals for HWW seed grant applications (due in November 2021). To learn more about the seed grants and how to apply for them, we welcome you to attend one of our upcoming Zoom...

Mellon Sawyer Seminar Information Session (#2) promotional image

Mellon Sawyer Seminar Information Session (#2)

Friday, February 12, 2021 8:30am to 9:30am
Virtual

Join us for this virtual information session if you're interested in submitting an application to direct a 2022–23 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar.

Zoom link: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/97541317741?pwd=TDVhUzQrYVYzUklNcnVtOWdLSXdDdz09

Free and open to all.

About Sawyer Seminars:

The Mellon Foundation's Sawyer Seminars were established in 1994 to provide support for comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments.  The seminars, named in...

Mellon Sawyer Seminar Information Session promotional image

Mellon Sawyer Seminar Information Session

Tuesday, February 9, 2021 8:30am to 9:30am
Virtual

Join us for this virtual information session if you're interested in submitting an application to direct a 2022–23 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar.

Zoom link: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/97541317741?pwd=TDVhUzQrYVYzUklNcnVtOWdLSXdDdz09

Free and open to all.

About Sawyer Seminars:

The Mellon Foundation's Sawyer Seminars were established in 1994 to provide support for comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments.  The seminars, named in...

I Spy: How to Read a Grant Application — An Obermann GET IT DONE! Lunchtime Workshop promotional image

I Spy: How to Read a Grant Application — An Obermann GET IT DONE! Lunchtime Workshop

Wednesday, February 3, 2021 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Virtual

The first step to secure a grant is to learn to be a careful close reader of calls for proposals. What key terms and concepts should you seek? How does the grant language match the funder’s mission? How can you actively demonstrate that your project will help funders achieve their goals? We’ve asked Kristi Fitzpatrick—Director of the Grant Support Office in the UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and one of the campus’ sharpest readers and writers of grants—to share her advice.

Free and open...

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...