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

Political Activism Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Political Activism Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Saturday, September 23, 2023 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Panel #2: Political Activism

Travers (Simon Fraser University): “Trans Participation in Sport: The Fight to Include Us in Public Life” Douglas Hartmann (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities): "Documenting and Rethinking the Impact of Protest through Sport: The Case of WNBA Activism in the 2020 Georgia Senate Race" Jason Kido Lopez (University of Wisconsin, Madison): "Constructing Crisis in Women’s Sports: Outkick’s 'Anti-Woke' Sports Media Brand"

There will be a break from noon to 1 p.m.

...
Athletes and Resistance Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Athletes and Resistance Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Saturday, September 23, 2023 10:30am to 12:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Panel #3: Athletes and Resistance

Adrian Burgos (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): "In Clemente's Wake: Afro-Latino Ballplayers and the Quest for Respect"

Noah Cohan (Washington University, St. Louis): “Raising a Glass Helmet: How Black Athletes and Artists Resist Football’s Head Gear”

Jaime Schultz (Penn State University): "Consumed: On Women, Distance Running, Disordered Eating, and Illness Narratives"

Moderated by Glenn Houlihan, a PhD student in American...

Publishing Fair and Reception - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Publishing Fair and Reception - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Friday, September 22, 2023 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building

In addition to snacks and drinks, this informal reception will include booths from university presses that publish work on sport.

This event is a part of the Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium. 

Free and open to all.

'I Was Raised on this Sport: Football and Female Expertise' Keynote Address - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

'I Was Raised on this Sport: Football and Female Expertise' Keynote Address - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Friday, September 22, 2023 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Stanley Museum of Art

How can the history of activism in sports help us understand the dynamics shaping conflicts today? How might labor relations in sport be imagined differently? How does the structure of sporting entertainment provide opportunities and obstacles to activism, and how can activists navigate these challenges?

As fans flock to sports arenas to cheer for their favorite teams, these spaces are simultaneously important societal battlegrounds. From acts of political protest by players to legislative...

Imagining Belonging Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Imagining Belonging Panel - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Friday, September 22, 2023 10:15am to 1:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Welcomes and Panel #1: Imagining Belonging

Michael Butterworth (University of Texas, Austin): "The Team That United a City: On Sports Documentaries and the Rhetorical Construction of Unity" Theresa Runstedtler (American University): "Black vs. White Ball: Race and the 1974 NBA Finals" Ashley Brown (University of Wisconsin, Madison): “A Patriot’s Game: Tennis, Physical Fitness, and ‘Good Citizenship’ during World War II” Abraham Kahn (University of Arkansas): “Sundays and Saturdays: Brian...
Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall promotional image

Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall

Friday, September 22, 2023 10:00am to 4:00pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies & the Office of the Vice President for Research present Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall, a daylong online writing retreat for faculty, academic staff, and graduate students across the UI, led by Michelle Boyd, PhD, of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats.

This full-day online writing retreat offers an opportunity to set up your fall writing plans. You'll learn how to quickly clarify what needs to be done, what to do...