Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, May 31, 2029 (all day)
111 Church Street

Books 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 turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

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News

Imagining America: A Call to Action

A group of nine University of Iowa faculty members, graduate students, and staff attended the Imagining America conference in Syracuse, New York from October 4-6, 2013, "A Call to Action."Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life is a consortium of universities and organizations dedicated...
David L. Gould (Headshot)_1.jpg

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

Jennifer New
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...
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Recent Events

Scrutinizing the Shelves: Banned Books — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Scrutinizing the Shelves: Banned Books — An Obermann Conversation

Thursday, October 5, 2023 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Recently, there has been an escalation of book bans and censorship in public school classrooms and libraries across the U.S. Many of the current book ban campaigns target books by or about LGBTQIA+ persons and people of color. In this Obermann Conversation, an outreach librarian, two scholars of education, and the director of a local cultural institution will discuss the history of book bans in the Midwest as well as nationally, and look forward to a future with access to books for all.

Panelis...

Get Concrete About Abstracts — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop promotional image

Get Concrete About Abstracts — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop

Wednesday, October 4, 2023 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

The conference abstract is a surprisingly difficult academic genre. How do you explain your project and entice your reader with only a couple hundred words? In this Get It Done lunchtime workshop, Hyaeweol Choi (Professor, Religious Studies & Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies) and E. Cram (Professor, Communication Studies & Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies) will discuss how to write a compelling conference abstract that will grab the attention of conference selection committees. Both...

Out of the Archive: S. Torriano Berry Horror Trilogy Film Screening promotional image

Out of the Archive: S. Torriano Berry Horror Trilogy Film Screening

Tuesday, October 3, 2023 6:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Please join us at FilmScene this fall for a monthly screening and discussion series, Out of the Archive: Envisioning Blackness. A continuation of conversations begun last spring in the inaugural Out of the Archive program, the series showcases the vibrant, multifaceted tradition of Black cinema by presenting rarely screened and/or recently restored films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0). Join us before each screening for a free dinner reception...

Obermann Humanities 3MT (3-Minute Thesis) Competition promotional image

Obermann Humanities 3MT (3-Minute Thesis) Competition

Thursday, September 28, 2023 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

The Obermann Center's 2023 Humanities Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) will take place from 3 to 5 p.m on Thursday, Sept. 28 at the Iowa City Public Library. 

This 3MT is specially designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The 3MT event challenges graduate students to articulate their complex research clearly and concisely to non-specialist audiences in three minutes or fewer. The presented research can be a student’s thesis or PhD work, research related to an internship or...

Canceled
McGranahan Lecture Jelani Cobb promotional image

McGranahan Lecture Jelani Cobb

Tuesday, September 26, 2023 7:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Against the backdrop of a pandemic that disproportionately affects Black people, and a renewed push for racial justice, historian and Peabody Award-winning journalist Jelani Cobb emerges as a clear voice in the fight for a better America. A PBS Frontline correspondent for two critically acclaimed documentaries—Policing the Police and Whose Vote Counts—Cobb explores the enormous complexities of race and inequality, while offering guidance and hope for the future. A long-time writer for The New...

Closing Reflections - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Closing Reflections - Sports, Power, and Resistance Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Saturday, September 23, 2023 2:30pm to 3:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

This the closing session of the Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium. 

Free and open to all.