Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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, Sept. 26, 2026, 3 p.m.

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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News

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Dave Gould Is First Obermann Public Scholar

Though we tend to associate scholarship with the work of campus faculty members, knowledge creation also has strong roots in our communities. The Obermann Center is piloting a Public Scholar program designed to enhance research on campus through partnerships that engage University of Iowa researchers with innovators outside the University. As Obermann...
Herman Gray

Herman Gray Visit Stems from Obermann Cmiel Semester

Herman S. Gray, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will give a public lecture on October 18, 2013, “On Race, Representation, and Resonance,” in Becker Auditorium, Room 101, at 4:00 pm. His lecture engages with the way scholars of television and race often take representation as the site of subject/ion and visibility as the object of cultural politics. Gray asks if...
Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie : dessiné d’après nature / par Jacques Gamelin

Health Humanities Planning Sessions

We will host two informal planning sessions for University of Iowa faculty and staff who are interested in next April's Health Humanities Working Symposium. (We are having two meetings in order to accommodate schedules.) If you would like to learn more, to participate in the event, or to meet colleagues working across these domains—from medical anthropologists and historians to poets writing about...

Translating Ixtlilxochitl’s Thirteenth Relation

At the death of an Aztec king, two brothers contest their father’s throne. A civil war ensues and ends with the kingdom divided in two. A number of years later, a Spanish conquistador named Cortés arrives in the area and one brother sends him an offer: I’ll help you if you help me. With the Spaniard’s assistance, the one brother is deposed, while the other not only takes the throne but fights...

Designing the Future

As changes in technology, population, climate, the economy, the organization of knowledge, and other systems gather speed, the need to predict and even to design the future accelerates as does the need to re-envision STEM as STEAM (sciences, technology, engineering, arts-humanities, and medicine). Through 2013-2014, a series of "futurists"—from the arts...
Just Strike by Josh MacPhee

Exuberant Politics: Fall 2013

Exuberant Politics is a yearlong programming initiative examining recent intersections of art and activism around the world. Organized by Exubernaut Collective, a group of faculty, graduate students, and community members, the series enjoys sponsorship from across community and campus, including the Obermann Center.Where have we experienced exuberance in protest and affinity? Grassroots political...

Obermann Afternoons Kicks Off with Talk on Intergenre Crossing

Building on the Obermann Center’s tradition of nurturing interdisciplinary scholarship, the Intergenre Explorations Working Group has brought together faculty engaged in intergenre work. Rather than (or in addition to) crossing disciplines, intergenre work crosses from one mode of research or presentation to another. Synthesizing scholarly and creative modalities, these crossings entail palpable...

Obermann Director Named to National Humanities Alliance Board of Directors

The Obermann Center is pleased to announce that Director Teresa Mangum has been invited to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Humanities Alliance. For over 30 years, the NHA has been the nation’s leading public policy and advocacy organization for the academic and public humanities. This non-partisan advocacy coalition works to advance humanities education and research, preserve...

Teaching the Latino Midwest

The culture and history of Latinos in the Midwest is an increasingly significant topic for college courses in Latino/a Studies. Numbers alone indicate that this regional emphasis is critical. Between 2000 and 2010, the Latino population increased by 44% across the country and by more than 73% in many Midwestern states. Yet, there is no teachable anthology for undergraduate classes.Claire Fox...

Interdisciplinary Research Grant Groups in Residence for July

Three groups of scholars are currently in residence at the Obermann Center throughout July as part of the Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG). These grants foster collaborative scholarship by offering recipients with intensive time, as well as space, in which to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. Past IDRG recipients have created a music therapy app...

Recent Events

Lisa Tetrault Book Reading promotional image

Lisa Tetrault Book Reading

Saturday, October 5, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Lisa Tetrault is Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University. She specializes in the history of U.S. women, gender, race, and American democracy. Her book, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898, traces the making of a story about the foundations of American feminism and interrogates that story’s political purposes, both inside and outside the movement. It won the Organization of American Historians’ women’s history book prize. Tetrault lectures...

“No Room for Maria at the Inn”: Race, Nation, and the Restriction of Maternity Care in El Paso, Texas, 1922-42 promotional image

“No Room for Maria at the Inn”: Race, Nation, and the Restriction of Maternity Care in El Paso, Texas, 1922-42

Friday, October 4, 2019 4:00pm
Schaeffer Hall

Dr. Heather Sinclair will be giving a lectured titled, "No Room for Maria at the Inn": Race, Nation, and the Restriction of Maternity Care in El Paso, Texas: 1922-42. 

Heather Sinclair is an Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State University. Her research focuses on the history of reproduction, midwifery, childbirth, and public health in the late nineteenth- and twentieth century US viewed through the lens of race, gender, sexuality, and settler colonialism. She has a background in...

When Women Won the Right to Vote: An American Fiction

Thursday, October 3, 2019 5:00pm to 6:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

A leading historian of the Women’s Rights and Suffrage Movement in the Nineteenth Century explores the myths associated with popular understandings of when, how, and why women initiated social movements for equal citizenship rights.

Obermann Humanities 3MT Competition promotional image

Obermann Humanities 3MT Competition

Friday, September 27, 2019 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

On Friday, September 27, from 4:00–5:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library (Room A), the Obermann Center will host a Humanities Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, especially designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The 3MT competition challenges graduate students to articulate their complex research clearly and concisely to non-specialist audiences; the goal of presenters is to present their research in three minutes or fewer. The winner of the Obermann Humanities...

How to Write Effective Letters of Recommendation: A Lunchtime Workshop promotional image

How to Write Effective Letters of Recommendation: A Lunchtime Workshop

Thursday, September 26, 2019 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

In this informal workshop, Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum will share tips and advice on writing recommendation letters. Come with questions—and bring your own lunch!

This is an informal, lunchtime workshop that is part of the GET IT DONE! series. Everyone is welcome; no registration is necessary.

Imagining Latinidades in Global and National Perspective (Sawyer Seminar Opening Conference)

Saturday, September 21, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this opening conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help frame the larger scope of a yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” Speakers include the following:

Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University. Her research spans urban ethnography, the political economy of culture and media, consumption, immigration, and geographies of inequality and race.

Valerie Martinez-Ebers is...