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

Humanities on the Hill 2017—with the National Humanities Alliance

Just as news was breaking that the proposed federal budget could zero out the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, I joined representatives from nearly 200 colleges and universities in Washington, D.C. for the 2017 National Humanities Alliance Advocacy Day. As the current secretary of the NHA Board of Directors, I know firsthand what...

The Making of "Hot Tamale Louie": Fantastical immigrant’s tale inspires multi-genre production

Sometime between chemo and radiation, John Rapson was struck by inspiration. It came in the form of a New Yorker article. The long piece, “Citizen Khan” by Kathryn Schulz, is as meandering and rich as its subject: Zarif Khan. After reading the article last June, Rapson, a jazz professor in the School of Music, immediately knew that he’d found the subject for a new piece. Not only would it include...

Sara Goldrick-Rab's Feb. 13 college affordability talks available online

On February 13, 2017, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Higher Education Policy & Sociology at Temple University, visited the UI campus to discuss the crisis of college affordability and student loan debt. Both of her public lectures are now available online. Listen to Sara Goldrick-Rab's Inequality Seminar talk, “Making College Affordable: Adventures in Scholar-Activism.” Watch her lecture,...

Artistic director Michael Rohd to discuss cultivating community-centered arts April 5

Effective collaboration starts with something very simple: listening. Michael Rohd, Artistic Director of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and the Sojourn Theatre, will speak about his experiences collaborating with arts councils, service organizations, artists, community agencies, and local governments around the country to make space and context for meaningful, arts-based partnership...

A Symposium Bears Fruit: New book and an inter-institutional grant the latest results of The Latino Midwest

Convening the right group of people at the right time can create not just a ripple effect but a tidal wave of creative, collaborative products. Claire Fox (English and Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS) has seen this firsthand. Since she co-directed The Latino Midwest, the 2012–13 Obermann Humanities Symposium, a new University of Iowa program has come into being, a related textbook is soon to be...

The Phenomena of Attention: Shaun Vecera's Current Study of Distracted Driving

The stoplight has just turned red. Your cell phone is sitting on the seat next to you, and it vibrated a few blocks back. Should you pick it up and check it? Could this be considered distracted driving, even though the car isn’t moving? Without a doubt, says Shaun Vecera (Psychological & Brain Sciences, CLAS), a current Obermann Fellow-in-Residence who is studying individuals prone to risky...

Recent Events

Deadline: Apply to Develop a Graduate Humanities Lab Course in Summer 2022 promotional image

Deadline: Apply to Develop a Graduate Humanities Lab Course in Summer 2022

Tuesday, April 19, 2022 (all day)

The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities to both a social challenge and skills valued in multiple career settings. The Lab grant will be awarded to one or more humanities or humanities-adjacent faculty members who, along with...

Publicly Engaged Humanities Graduate Education by Degrees promotional image

Publicly Engaged Humanities Graduate Education by Degrees

Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

Across the country, colleges and universities are reimagining humanities graduate education to address students’ commitment to public-facing work and professional development needs. As a result, many institutions have taken steps to tailor humanities pedagogy to meet student demands by creating master’s programs and graduate certificates in Public Humanities. As the University of Iowa Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good Initiative participants design a graduate certificate and...

Judaism in the Diary of Anne Frank: A Discussion promotional image

Judaism in the Diary of Anne Frank: A Discussion

Monday, April 11, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

As we await the arrival of the Anne Frank Tree, which will be planted on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on April 29, 2022, we encourage people of all ages to read the book that is at the heart of this event. Better yet—read it in community!

To provide context to your reading, we’re offering three in-person discussions at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St., Iowa City). All of the discussions are free and open to the general public. 

In this second session, Josh Hare, program...

Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space promotional image

Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space

Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:30am to 12:15pm
Macbride Hall

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is a scientist and author. An adjunct assistant professor at Rice University, she studies behavioral manipulation of animal hosts by their parasites. She has worked on systems that infect the brains of fish, and wasps that control the behavior of other wasps before eating them. Dr. Weinersmith and her partner, the cartoonist Zach Weinersmith, coauthored the New York Times bestselling book Soonish.

This talk is part of the 2022 Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest. All events...

Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University promotional image

Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University

Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:45am to 11:30am
Macbride Hall

Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and a visiting research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. He uses experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and computational biology to better understand the underlying causes and consequences of disease. He is a recipient of the UNCF-Merck Award, the Broad Institute Diversity Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

This talk is...

Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? Dr. Shamar Chin promotional image

Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? Dr. Shamar Chin

Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:00am to 10:45am
Macbride Hall

Dr. Shamar Chin is Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Iowa. Dr. Chin is a micropaleontologist, specializing in nannofossils, which she uses to understand climatological and ecological histories.

This talk is part of the 2022 Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest. All events are free and open to the public.