Upcoming Events

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...

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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

Lecture: "John Luther Long, David Belasco, Giacomo Puccini, and Butterfly’s Journey to La Scala and the Met."

Wednesday, May 8, 2024 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Voxman Music Building

Commemorating the 120th anniversary of Madama Butterfly (premiered at La Scala on Feb. 17, 1904), Professor Barker’s Met Opera in HD talk will discuss the opera in its literary, historical, geopolitical, and musical contexts. 

Streaming of the Met performance in Sycamore theater on Saturday, May 11. 

https://www.marcustheatres.com/movies/the-metropolitan-opera-madama-butt...

Hosted by the Opera Studies Obermann Working Group

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2024) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2024)

Tuesday, May 7, 2024 5:00pm

Obermann Center Faculty Fellows (formerly Fellows-in-Residence) fully devote themselves to projects within an interdisciplinary community. The program supports artists, researchers, and scholars during periods when focus and feedback are crucial. The program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...

Obermann Center 45th Anniversary Celebration, Featuring Keynotes by Joy Connolly & Antoinette Burton promotional image

Obermann Center 45th Anniversary Celebration, Featuring Keynotes by Joy Connolly & Antoinette Burton

Monday, May 6, 2024 5:00pm
Hancher Auditorium

Please join the Vice President for Research at the Hancher Auditorium's Stanley Café at 5 p.m. on Monday, May 6 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. The event will feature guests Joy Connolly and Antoinette Burton, prestigious national leaders in the humanities and social sciences. All are invited to the reception afterward to celebrate this important anniversary and the Center’s outgoing director, Professor Teresa Mangum. 

Please RSVP to let us know...

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2024–25) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2024–25)

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 5:00pm

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 explore new work and to share their own research, to organize a symposium, and to develop grant proposals. 

This program allows participants from across the campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a moment when cross...

Film History Now: A Conversation with Pardis Dabashi and Allyson Nadia Field

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Virtual

What does the practice of film history look like today? What different methods—from interdisciplinary inquiry to speculative historiography and public humanities projects—are scholars using to tell new stories about film culture? Please join us to discuss these and other questions with two highly accomplished scholars: Pardis Dabashi (Bryn Mawr College) and Allyson Nadia Field (University of Chicago). Dr. Dabashi will discuss her recently published monograph Losing the Plot: Form and Feeling in...

CLIMATE through a Wide Lens promotional image

CLIMATE through a Wide Lens

Thursday, April 25, 2024 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Old Capitol Museum

Rising seas, toxic rivers, deforestation, smoke-filled air—headlines remind us daily of the local, national, and international impacts of climate change. Join us for a wild pecha kucha ride through the effects of climate change with researchers who also tirelessly seek solutions. World-renowned climate scientist, Jerald Schnoor will open with big picture issues. That will set the stage for artist Isabel Barbuzza’s work on South American lithium salt mines, environmental literary scholar Eric...