Upcoming Events & Deadlines
Holding Space: Stories of Interdisciplinary Collaboration — Counterpoint event featuring Stephanie Miracle
Tuesday, October 13, 2026 5:00pm to 6:15pm
Join us to celebrate the interdisciplinary work of University of Iowa choreographer and assistant professor of dance Stephanie Miracle, recipient of the 2026 Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award.
Miracle will bring together dance, engineering, and the humanities in a brief improvisational performance featuring dancers Bea Beaman and Trinity Woody performing alongside robots built by the University of Iowa College of Engineering, with narration by Eric Gidal and music by Jean-François...
Coping with Collective Trauma on Stage
Thursday, October 15, 2026 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Acclaimed theater director, translator and chair of theater arts Roy Horovitz will perform "The Final Final Solution" in the Black Box Theater at the IMU. This performance event, along with associated lectures in the afternoon, "Laughing at our own Tragedies" and "Theatre & The Holocaust", will be of interest to faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students and members of the community.
Bilingual Readings with Kawaguchi Harumi and Rina Kikuchi
Friday, October 16, 2026 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Join the University of Iowa (UI) Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS), an International Programs affinity group, for a special evening of bilingual readings featuring acclaimed Japanese poet Kawaguchi Harumi and translator Rina Kikuchi.
Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)
Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
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...
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News
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...
Christopher Newfield penetrates "humanities crisis"
On April 28, we invite you to join Christopher Newfield (University of California, Santa Barbara) as he asks, “What Are the Humanities For—in the 21st Century?” One of the country’s most energetic analysts of higher education funding, Newfield has such diverse interests and expertise that his talk may range from literature to economics and corporate culture to the roots of American education and...
Health Humanities: Building the Future of Research and Teaching
Health Humanities: Building the Future of Research and Teaching, a two-day Obermann Working Symposium, promises to be a paradigm-shifting moment for the University of Iowa and a leap forward in the larger field of the health humanities. The six keynote speakers include the editors of the two forthcoming health humanities anthologies, Paul Crawford and Tess Jones, as well as the editor of a graphic...
Inquiring About Affect - A Conversation with Naomi Greyser
How might the work of artists, scholars, and activists be more pleasurable and easeful? How might our working environments and labor conditions be more healthy? These are some of the questions this year’s Obermann Humanities Symposium, Affect & Inquiry, will address. Co-directed by Naomi Greyser (Rhetoric, CLAS), Deborah Whaley (American Studies, CLAS), and Jeffrey Bennett (Communication Studies...
2nd Iowa Humanities Festival: From Jamaica to Rome in a Day
Alta Vista, Bettendorf, Camanche, Elkader, Humboldt, Jamaica, McGregor, Persia, Rome, Zwingle—far-flung corners of the world have found their way into the very names of Iowa cities and towns. The 2014 Iowa Humanities Festival, “A World at Home | A Home in the World,” invites you to travel the world while staying right at home in the “French” city of Des Moines...
Designing the Future for Publicly Engaged Research and Teaching in the Humanities
A recent New York Times Opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof—“Professors, We Need You!”—inspired national debate about the status of “public intellectuals.” The Obermann Center continues the conversation on March 10, 2014, with the next two speakers in our yearlong...
Andrea Charise On the Health Humanities Frontier
Using music to manage chronic pain. Training the eye to see emotional as well as physical symptoms of suffering in a gallery of portraits. Absorbing a sense of well-being through encounters with the written word. Bringing together the arts, humanities, and health sciences offers incalculable benefits. This April, the Obermann Center will offer a...
Comics in the Library, Museum and Classroom - Rachel Williams and Corey Creekmur Make a Case for Comics in Academia
Comics: Their Time Has Come — Three years ago, Corey Creekmur (Cinema & Comparative Literature and English, CLAS) and Rachel Williams (Art & Art History and GWSS, CLAS) and their colleague Ana Merino (Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS) co-directed a highly successful Obermann Humanities Symposium, "Comics, Creativity, and Culture." The three-day event fostered dynamic exchanges between notable creators and...
Wall to Wall
Standing on the Great Wall of China in 1991, Mohammad Chaichian wondered at the feat of architecture and engineering that extended in front of him as far as he could see. Although the wall was ostensibly built to keep out nomadic “barbarians,” Chaichian, a sociology professor with training in architecture and urban planning, wondered how those on the other side, the so-called barbarians, viewed it...
Obermann Part of Major Collaborative Mellon Award
Obermann Center Member of Major Collaborative Mellon Grant The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $3,000,000 for an innovative two-year project, “Humanities Without Walls,” that will include faculty and graduate students at the University of Iowa. In addition to the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the collaboration includes fourteen humanities institutes in the Midwest and beyond. By...
