Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, May 31, 2029 (all day)
111 Church Street

Books Ends—Obermann Book Completion Workshop supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist faculty members turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

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News

Meet the Manuscript with Obermann Graduate Fellow Heather Wacha

28 beaver fur hats. 6 panels of tapestries. Wool from Flanders. Silks, cloths, and linens. Furniture, paintings, and sculptures. Gold and Silver. All manner of carriages. If you had been an heir of the estate of Don Francisco Muñoz Carillo, a nobleman from Cuenca, Spain, who died in 1687, you may have received some part of these items. However, before you get too excited, you would have also...

2015-16 Obermann Annual Report

Welcome to the 2015-16 Obermann Center Annual Report! View the report in its entirety. I often find the best inspiration for the year ahead is a quick look in the rearview mirror. That’s certainly true for the Obermann Center, where that mirror frames a panorama of fellow travelers—faculty, staff, students, and partners—in 2015–16. In Summer 2015, faculty with Obermann Interdisciplinary...

Humanities research and the human condition

This article by Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum appeared in the July 14, 2016, edition of Iowa Now: If you follow news about higher education, you know that the value of humanities scholarship—the study of the arts, cultures, history, languages, literature, philosophy, and religion—is often called into question. Pummeled by busyness, technical challenges, health care costs...

Open-Access Tools Make Research Available to All

Jenna Hammerich
Not so long ago, if you wanted to read The Odyssey, you needed several massive—and expensive—tomes: the original text, appendices of endnotes, maps, and family trees, maybe even a Greek dictionary. Today, thanks to digital humanists like Sarah Bond (Classics, CLAS) and Paul Dilley (Classics and Religious Studies, CLAS), you can access many classical texts online, for free, with notes...
human immunodeficiency virus

Reviving Biophilia—Mary Trachsel Considers Our Disconnect from the Natural World

Jennifer New
Animals on Campus Humans share the state of Iowa with as many as 20 million hogs, in addition to millions of chickens and cows. In a state so densely populated with non-human animals, why are they so invisible to us on the University of Iowa campus? This wasn’t always the case. In the 1800s, a fence was erected around the Pentacrest to keep pigs off the grounds. An early professor of writing...
Noaquia Callahan portrait, German Fulbright award winner

A Q&A with 2016-17 Fulbright winner Noaquia Callahan

A Q&A with 2016-17 Fulbright winner Noaquia Callahan Authored by Benjamin Partridge About Noaquia: Noaquia Callahan, P.h.D. candidate in history at the University of Iowa and 2016-17 Fulbright grant winner. Noaquia Callahan, a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Iowa, is one of 13 Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant winners from the UI for 2016-17. Callahan was chosen as...
Cultural Textural Exchange.jpg

Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar to Focus on Eurasian Manuscripts in 2016-17

Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Pre-Modern Eurasia Exploring manuscript diversity before the printed book During the 2016-17 academic year, a core group of University of Iowa faculty and graduate students will work to map cultural exchanges across Eurasia from roughly 400 CE ­ ca. 1450 CE, by focusing on the development, distribution and sharing of manuscript...

Digital Bridges to Obermann - Summer 2016 Institute and Collaborations

This summer the Obermann Center will host a number of faculty projects thanks to the generous support of our Andrew W. Mellon Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry partnership with Grinnell College. The goal of the grant is to experiment with ways that faculty and students from a liberal arts college and a research university can mutually enrich their scholarship and teaching through creative...

Why I Give to the Obermann Center - Ken Brown

The Obermann Center holds a special place in my heart. This is so not because of Director Teresa Mangum’s southern charm or the cookies in the kitchen, although both are gifts to all who visit. Instead, I love Obermann for what it offers to scholars on this campus, and for the opportunities it has given me to be in community with these very scholars. "Obermann offers the impetus and the...

HASTAC Scholars Reflect on Graduate Institute Symposium

On March 3-4, 2016, the Obermann Graduate Institute celebrated its tenth anniversary. In addition to welcoming back alumni of the program, including Tala Al-Rousan (Harvard), Ted Gutsche (Florida International University), Bridget Draxler (Monmouth College), and Craig Eley (ACLS Scholar, Wisconsin Public Radio), we were also joined by founding co-director David Redlawsk, currently at Rutgers and...
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Recent Events

Joseph Graves. A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Discusses How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Some of Our Biggest Problems promotional image

Joseph Graves. A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Discusses How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Some of Our Biggest Problems

Saturday, April 13, 2024 10:45am to 11:30am
Phillips Hall

Joseph L. Graves Jr. is a professor of biological science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and former associate dean for research at the Joint School for Nanoscience and Nanoengineering. His research focuses on the genomics of adaptation and evolutionary theories of aging. He has also written two books that address myths of race in the U.S. and is frequently interviewed for articles, podcasts, and documentaries on this topic.

2024 Iowa City Darwin Day promotional image

2024 Iowa City Darwin Day

Saturday, April 13, 2024 10:00am to 12:30pm
Phillips Hall

Every year to mark Charles Darwin’s birthday, Iowa City Darwin Day organizes a two-day celebration of science designed to promote scientific literacy and increase public awareness of the contributions of science to society. The featured speakers for the 2024 events on April 12 and 13 are Joseph Graves Jr., Harmit Malik and Heather Sander. All talks are free and open to all. 

Joseph Graves Jr. is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at North Carolina Agricultural...

Harmit Malik: Rules of Engagement: Molecular Arms Races Between Primate and Viral Genomes promotional image

Harmit Malik: Rules of Engagement: Molecular Arms Races Between Primate and Viral Genomes

Friday, April 12, 2024 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Harmit Malik is a biologist, a member of the USA National Academy of Sciences, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. His research focuses on genetic conflict and has direct implications for understanding human disease. Dr. Malik will also give a talk for the public, “Paleovirology: Ghosts and Gifts of Ancient Viruses,” on Saturday, April 13.

This talk is part of Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest, a two-day celebration of science designed to promote scientific literacy and increase public...

Joseph Graves: Race, Health, and the Built Microbiome promotional image

Joseph Graves: Race, Health, and the Built Microbiome

Friday, April 12, 2024 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Biology Building East

Joseph Graves Jr. is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Dr. Graves’ research focuses on the evolution of adaptation and evolutionary theories of aging. He has risen to international prominence as the author of two books that address myths of race in American society, The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium and The Race Myth: Why We Pretend That Race Exists in America. ...

2024 Iowa City Darwin Day promotional image

2024 Iowa City Darwin Day

Friday, April 12, 2024 2:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Every year to mark Charles Darwin’s birthday, Iowa City Darwin Day organizes a two-day celebration of science designed to promote scientific literacy and increase public awareness of the contributions of science to society. The featured speakers for the 2024 events on April 12 and 13 are Joseph Graves Jr. and Harmit Malik. All talks are free and open to all. 

Joseph Graves Jr. is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical...

Prairie Lights Reading with Visiting Scholar Lesley-Ann Noel promotional image

Prairie Lights Reading with Visiting Scholar Lesley-Ann Noel

Thursday, April 11, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Free copy of Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo for the first 30 attendees!

What motivates you as a changemaker? What forces are preventing you (and others) from thriving? These questions are essential to the work of creating social change, and they are exactly what Lesley-Ann Noel asks you to explore in her new book, Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo (Ten Speed Press, 2023). In the book and at...