Upcoming Events

Book Ends Information Session (virtual) promotional image

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)

Tuesday, February 3, 2026 8:30am to 9:00am
Virtual

Book 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 faculty members in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Read more about the program.

Interested applicants are invited to learn more about the program and application process at a virtual information session on Tuesday, February 3, at 8:30 a.m. Obermann Center Director Luis Martín-Estudillo...

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 8:30am to 4:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete tips and operational strategies that support planning and longer-term sustainability.

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

The Research Development Office is hosting an in person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective promotional image

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective

Friday, January 23, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This program offers accountability to artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of writing project (articles, essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, etc.) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.

In spring 2026, four writing groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St. Each group will meet once a week for 1.5 hours, beginning the week of...

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award promotional image

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award

Monday, February 2, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

The new Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award recognizes individuals or teams whose trajectories have engaged diverse disciplines to produce insights that would be unattainable within a single academic silo. These scholars cultivate collaborative work, fostering dialogue across academic fields and institutional units. Their research or creative work engages with foundational questions that resonate across society. By recognizing interdisciplinary excellence, the Obermann Center for...

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026)

Saturday, February 14, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Fall 2026 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 with...

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Tuesday, February 17, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book 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 in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

News

Iphigenia Point Blank image of a woman's face

Iphigenia Point Blank—On stage and in the community

Jennifer New
Two summers ago as part of the Obermann Interdisciplinary Grant program, a group of artists commandeered the Obermann attic and covered tables and walls with prints of Greek vases and statues, photos of George W. Bush and fashion models on the catwalk, a golden blanket made of foil, and film stills of abandoned life jackets. The rich array of objects and images proved to be the birthing site for a...

UI Awarded two grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation totaling $1.6 Million

One grant will bring exciting speakers to campus for a yearlong seminar on Latina/o/x identities and cultures; the other will create practice-based, cross-disciplinary opportunities for humanities graduate students interested in diverse careers. The University of Iowa (UI) Obermann Center for Advanced Studies in the Office of the Vice President for Research will host two grants totaling...
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Capturing the Lived Experiences of Latinx High Schoolers

As recipients of a Summer 2018 Interdisciplinary Research Grant, Gerta Bardhoshi (Counselor Education), Leslie Ann Locke (Educational Policy & Leadership), and Jeremy Swanston (Art & Art History) are engaged in a multi-phase project that seeks to give voice to rural Latinx high school students' lived educational experiences, engage in critical dialogue, and promote policy development in the...
Vero Smith

Vero Smith: Making the Museum More Accessible

Jennifer New
Vero Smith is a curator and scholar of architecture who has a passion for making high-level research accessible to the public. As the Associate Curator of the Legacies for Iowa project at the UI Stanley Museum of Art, Smith brings her training in architectural design gained via an MA at the University of Iowa, an MA of Design Studies from Harvard University, and her experience at the Obermann...
Joy Melody Woods

Making Space: Grad Institute alum blogs, podcasts for Black graduate students with mental health issues

Jenna Hammerich
Imagine discovering halfway through your master’s degree that you read at a fourth-grade level. That’s exactly what happened to Joy Melody Woods during her first year in the College of Public Health’s MPH Program. After mentioning to her supervisor that she was having difficulties in some of her classes and struggling to focus on the assigned readings, her supervisor suggested that she be...
Open book with butterflies fluttering above it

Book Ends: New program helps faculty finish book projects

Bringing a book to the finish line of publication is one of the most challenging tasks faced by scholars in disciplines where monographs are the main vehicle for sharing discoveries. At the Obermann Center, we hope to smooth the path by helping create an inspiring, supportive audience of experts for authors in they head into the final stretch of completing a book project....
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Recent Events

Verdi's Falstaff and Shakespeare's: An introduction to the Metropolitan Opera performance. Lecture by Miriam Gilbert promotional image

Verdi's Falstaff and Shakespeare's: An introduction to the Metropolitan Opera performance. Lecture by Miriam Gilbert

Thursday, March 30, 2023 5:30pm to 6:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Prof. Miriam Gilbert will explore the relationship between Verdi's opera and its Shakespearean sources.

Free and open to the public. The talk will also be available on zoom: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/9153651333

Sponsored by the Opera Studies Forum and the Obermann Center.

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Screenings of República and Dazed Flesh promotional image

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Screenings of República and Dazed Flesh

Thursday, March 30, 2023 4:15pm to 5:45pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora brings together filmmakers, artists, scholars, and critics from across the globe in order to inaugurate a practice of collective attunement. How can we best attune ourselves to the waves set in motion by this new cinema? How does Brazil’s current...

Frequências Keynote Lecture by Janaína Oliveira promotional image

Frequências Keynote Lecture by Janaína Oliveira

Thursday, March 30, 2023 3:15pm to 4:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

"Echoing Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora”

In this keynote, Janaína Oliveira (Federal Instituto of Rio de Janeiro) will critically overview the emergence of contemporary Afro-Brazilian cinema and its connections with other diasporas and the African continent through her curatorial practices.

Janaína Oliveira is a curator and...

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award promotional image

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award

Thursday, March 30 to Saturday, April 1, 2023 (all day)

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora

From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...

Kayla Hamilton Artist Talk promotional image

Kayla Hamilton Artist Talk

Thursday, March 23, 2023 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Public Space One

The Department of Dance is pleased to welcome artist Kayla Hamilton for a week of movement and dialogue. Kayla is a performance maker, dancer, educator, cultural consultant, and the artistic director of K. Hamilton Projects. A 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, her past performance work has been presented at the Whitney Museum, Gibney, Performance Space New York, New York Live Arts, Abrons Arts Center, and the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD). 

Kayla has developed ‘Crip Movement Lab’—a...

Application Deadline: Humanities for the Public Good Summer '23 Internships promotional image

Application Deadline: Humanities for the Public Good Summer '23 Internships

Thursday, March 9, 2023 5:00pm

Experiential learning is a cornerstone of the Humanities for the Public Good PhD as we create a program centered around the applied humanities. Eight internships are available for summer 2023 for UI PhD students in the humanities or humanities-adjacent disciplines. Interns will spend two summer months working with and for a campus or community partner on a specific project or area of focus. In addition to their work on site, interns also attend weekly cohort meetings and complete assignments...