Upcoming Events

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression promotional image

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression

Saturday, September 26, 2026 3:00pm
Voxman Music Building

“Eleanor Waltzes” honors First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt through performances of songs and poetry created and sent to her by American women. The event will also feature an exhibit of materials from the Iowa Women’s Archives and a “making do” reception with 1930s recipes. “Eleanor Waltzes” is part of Sounding the Nation at 250, a series of commemorative concerts surrounding the U.S. Semiquincentennial sponsored by the Society for American Music.

Saturday, September 26, 2026, 3 pm

Recital Hall, Voxman...

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

University of Iowa junior faculty and graduate students at all stages are invited to join Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at the University of Pennsylvania Press—for a light breakfast and a conversation about turning an article, thesis, or dissertation into a book on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 9–10:30 a.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies library. Please bring any questions you have about that process or about scholarly publishing in general.

Register by Wednesday, September 30.

Biggins is...

Registration Deadline: Undergraduate Career Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Undergraduate Career Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

Interested in a career in publishing? In this session on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at noon at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press, will discuss his career path and editorial work. This is an opportunity for students to hear directly from a distinguished professional about the realities of the field and to gain insight into how to prepare for a career in publishing. Pizza will be provided!

Please register by Wednesday, September 30.

B...

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

UI faculty, students, and staff are invited to attend ask-me-anything group discussions with Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press—at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 1 at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Questions might address finding an editor, pitching a book, writing a book proposal, how the publishing process works, etc.

There will be two back-to-back discussions; you may attend one or both.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, September 30.

Free and open to all.

Bi...

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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 of all ranks and with significant research responsibilities to turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour virtual workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500...

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: 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...

News

Teresa Mangum Named Secretary of National Humanities Alliance

Teresa Mangum, director of the Obermann Center, has been elected Secretary of the National Humanities Alliance Board of Directors, the largest humanities advocacy group in the country, located in Washington, D.C. The president of the board is David Marshall, Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of California-Santa Barbara. Mangum will be replacing Pauline Yu, the President of the...

We Did So Much Beyond the Home - Jeannette Gabriel talks about the Jewish Women in Iowa Project

Jeannette Gabriel, a 2013 Graduate Institute Fellow and a PhD candidate in Teaching and Learning, has been crisscrossing the state in an attempt to document a disappearing community. As a graduate research assistant in the Iowa Women's Archives, Gabriel is currently the backbone of the Jewish Women in Iowa Project. This special project was initiated by Joan Lipsky, a former Iowa state...

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...

Recent Events

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Welcome, Day II promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Welcome, Day II

Friday, April 5, 2019 8:45am to 9:00am
MERGE

 On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...

Travel is Home promotional image

Travel is Home

Friday, April 5 to Saturday, April 6, 2019 (all day)
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

In April, the University of Iowa Japanese Program will host more than twenty scholars from around the world as part of an international conference, "Travel is Home," exploring travel and landscape in Japanese literature, art, and culture.

Organizers Kendra Strand, assistant professor of premodern Japanese literature and visual culture, Kendall Heitzman, assistant professor of Japanese literature and culture, and Morten Schlütter, associate professor of Chinese religion and Buddhist studies...

Travel is Home promotional image

Travel is Home

Thursday, April 4, 2019 6:00pm to 9:00pm
University Capitol Centre

In April, the University of Iowa Japanese Program will host more than twenty scholars from around the world as part of an international conference, "Travel is Home," exploring travel and landscape in Japanese literature, art, and culture.

Organizers Kendra Strand, assistant professor of premodern Japanese literature and visual culture, Kendall Heitzman, assistant professor of Japanese literature and culture, and Morten Schlütter, associate professor of Chinese religion and Buddhist studies...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Reception promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Reception

Thursday, April 4, 2019 5:30pm to 7:00pm
MERGE

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Lecture: "Family Misfits in the Frankenstein Ballet" promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Lecture: "Family Misfits in the Frankenstein Ballet"

Thursday, April 4, 2019 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Welcome by Tricia Zebrowski & Douglas Baynton promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Welcome by Tricia Zebrowski & Douglas Baynton

Thursday, April 4, 2019 4:00pm to 4:15pm
Iowa City Public Library

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...