Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

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 Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

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...

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News

Performance from the Dance.Draw series at UNC-Charlotte, by Rob Singh-Latulipe.

Designing the Digital Future: Highlighting Informatics Work in the Arts and Humanities

Search “informatics” on Wikipedia and you’ll get a hint of the very wide swath that this relatively new field has already cut: bioinformatics, irrigation informatics, legal informatics, music informatics, cheminformatics, and disease informatics are just a few of its subfields. An idea that has been around for barely a half century...
2014 Imagining America PAGE Fellows

Reflections on Imagining America from UI’s PAGE Fellows

Moving the Middle — Reflections on Imagining America’s national conference by Heather Draxl: The theme of this year’s Imagining America conference, held in Atlanta, Georgia, was “Organizing. Culture. Change.” Those three words were intended to “represent concentrations of energy and activity across higher education and within the IA consortium” and played a role in one of the conference’s primary...
Crescendo poster

Obermann-Incubated Project Comes to a Crescendo

Masks give us permission to explore new ideas or to more bravely enact ways of being that we don’t usually give ourselves permission to pursue. They invite playfulness, humor, parody, and even a bit of mischief. Think Halloween costumes and masquerade balls. All of the qualities that masks allow and invite also make them a clever tool for exploring social issues, which is the aim of a new UI...
Bruce Gronbeck

Remembering Longtime Obermann Scholar Bruce Gronbeck

In January 1986, just days before the nation and the University of Iowa were scheduled to celebrate Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday for the first time, the Obermann Center was asked if we could “put together something” as part of the University’s observance. I was panicked, but then remembered that Bruce Gronbeck, a new guy at the Obermann Center, had been talking at...
One of thousands of photos that have been digitized as part of the Ft. Madison Prison Memory Project.

Incarcerated in Iowa - Relationship Forged at the Obermann Graduate Institute Results in Prisons Project and Symposium

Conversation Begins at Obermann Graduate Institute: Kathrina Litchfield, recent SLIS grad and a current PhD candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture (College of Education) and Gemma Goodale-Sussen (English, CLAS) met for the first time last January as Fellows of the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. As they shared their respective public engagement projects, each woman...
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Social Practice Art: Engaging Multiple Perspectives

The role of art in society has long been debated. If an artist works in a university and in combination with community partners, that definition becomes murkier yet.As part of the Obermann Center’s Summer Seminar, “Problem Solving Social Practice in Art,” a group of scholars, community organizers, and artists cast a wide net on the idea of “social practice in art,” examining and exposing gaps in...
HWW logo

Humanities Without Walls — Opportunities for Humanities Faculty and Graduate Students

Andrew W. Mellon–funded Grand Challenge — The Global Midwest As we announced last year, the Obermann Center is one of 15 centers in the $3,000,000 Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls Consortium headed by Professor Dianne Harris of the University of Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Applications are welcome from faculty at two or more consortial universities whose scholarship...

"Obermann Afternoons" Line Up Announced

Obermann Afternoons, the Obermann Center's informal speakers series, launches again this fall. “Anthropocene 101" leads the way on September 17 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm, as Barbara Eckstein (English, CLAS), Bradley Cramer (Earth & Environmental Sciences, CLAS), and Tyler Priest (History, CLAS) give a preview of their spring Humanities Symposium, Energy Cultures in the Age of the Anthropocene. They will...
Food for thought poster

Food for Thought, First Theme Semester

Obermann Co-sponsors Next Year's "Food for Thought"—First University of Iowa Theme Semester. It began with a small group of people and a big idea: rallying academic, arts, and community events around a common theme, connecting people and programs in original ways. Over the last few months, that idea has taken root. Next spring, it’ll bear fruit with a collection of initiatives under the banner...

Designing Technologies for Children

Seven years ago when Juan Pablo Hourcade (Computer Science, CLAS) published a review article about designing technologies for children, smartphones were not widespread, the iPad hadn’t been introduced, nor had motion-sensing gaming devices like Kinect. A lot has changed in terms of how children can access technology and what they can do it with. And yet there still is not a succinct overview of...

Recent Events

Humanities Without Walls Seed Grant Info Session (virtual) promotional image

Humanities Without Walls Seed Grant Info Session (virtual)

Friday, September 3, 2021 8:30am
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is proud to be a member of the Andrew W. Mellon funded Humanities Without Walls consortium. We will be supporting collaborative applications for teams led by one or more University of Iowa faculty members that might include teams of faculty, staff, community partners, and graduate students for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years.

If you are interested in applying:

please read the information below, including the PDF, contact Obermann Director...
Book Ends Information Session (virtual) promotional image

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)

Wednesday, September 1, 2021 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

Learn more about the application process and details of the Book Ends Book Completion program. At this info session, Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum will share her vision for the program and answer questions. 

REGISTER to receive the Zoom link.

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Books Ends supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for...

Application Deadline: Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar

Wednesday, July 14, 2021 5:00pm

For the second year, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is funding a graduate student Community Scholar to work with a local non-profit. This year, we are partnering with Open Heartland, a grassroots, community-based initiative that serves Latino immigrant families living in Johnson County, many of whom have escaped violence, extreme poverty, and lack of educational and health resources. Located on Iowa City's southeast side, Open Heartland has expanded during the pandemic in response to...

Clarifying Purpose in Your Current Academic Project promotional image

Clarifying Purpose in Your Current Academic Project

Friday, June 18, 2021 9:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going—Clarifying Purpose in Your Current Academic Project with Humanities for the Public Good and Liberating Structures
June 14 + June 18, 9 am - 12noon


When the pandemic hit, many of you set aside academic projects to respond to campus and community needs. This pair of free, virtual Liberating Structures workshops invites participants to consider how you might carry hard won knowledge from this year into your current arts or scholarly project as we re-emerge...

Clarifying Purpose in Your Current Academic Project promotional image

Clarifying Purpose in Your Current Academic Project

Monday, June 14, 2021 9:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going—Clarifying Purpose in Your Current Academic Project with Humanities for the Public Good and Liberating Structures
June 14 + June 18, 9 am - 12noon

When the pandemic hit, many of you set aside academic projects to respond to campus and community needs. This pair of free, virtual Liberating Structures workshops invites participants to consider how you might carry hard won knowledge from this year into your current arts or scholarly project as we re-emerge...

Summer Institute on Cross-Disciplinary Graduate Education promotional image

Summer Institute on Cross-Disciplinary Graduate Education

Tuesday, June 8 3:00pm to Friday, June 11, 2021 12:00pm
Virtual

How can cross-disciplinary, project-based courses serve graduate students across the University? This question is under investigation at the University of Iowa by both the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good PHD initiative and the National Science Foundation NRT-Funded Sustainable Water Development Graduate Program as well as implicitly in interdisciplinary degrees in many corners of the University.

In the past decade, groups of UI faculty members have taught “Big Ideas”...