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

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...

Recent Events

Application deadline: Summer 2022 HPG Internships promotional image

Application deadline: Summer 2022 HPG Internships

Monday, February 21, 2022 5:00pm

Experiential learning is a cornerstone of the Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good program. Nine internships are available for summer 2022 for UI PhD students in the humanities or humanities-adjacent disciplines. Interns will spend two summer months working with and for a campus or community partner on a specific project or area of focus. In addition to their work on site, interns also attend weekly cohort meetings and complete assignments that provide professionalizing skills and...

Ukraine and Russia: Deciphering the Current Situation — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Ukraine and Russia: Deciphering the Current Situation — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, February 16, 2022 5:00pm to 6:00pm
Virtual

As the news cycle continues to focus on tensions at the Ukraine-Russia border, we've reached out to three people who know the region well to help us better understand current events and what has led to this situation. In this pop-up Obermann Conversation, we'll hear from:

Daria Kuznetsova — A PhD student in Political Science and a native of Ukraine, Kuznetsova studies democratic transitions and the survival of democracies. For her Masters in Community and Regional Planning from ISU, she focused...

Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure promotional image

Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure

Friday, February 11, 2022 3:00pm to 4:15pm
Virtual

Join us for a virtual book talk from Hatim El-Hibri, author of Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure.

El-Hibri is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University. His research focuses on global and transnational media studies, visual culture studies, Lebanon and the Middle East, urban studies, television studies, and media theory and history.

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT I) promotional image

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT I)

Wednesday, February 9, 2022 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

The University of Iowa Pentacrest Museums explores current exhibition Let Me Be Myself: The Life Story of Anne Frank through the Exhibition Spotlight program series in a special two-part virtual panel event. Pentacrest Museums Director of Education & Engagement, Carolina Kaufman will moderate discussion with panelists on a variety of related topics to share the story and legacy of Anne Frank and her impact on society. These sessions will illuminate how Frank's story has inspired new approaches...

What Do We Mean by Research Now? — Collaborative Approaches to Understanding Memory and Minds promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now? — Collaborative Approaches to Understanding Memory and Minds

Monday, February 7, 2022 11:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

How do scientists gather and sustain teams to understand infinitely complex mysteries—in this case, memory and the mind? And how are our departments, colleges, and disciplinary organizations adapting to the need for such deeply interdisciplinary teams? Join us on February 7, 2022, as a group of researchers from neuroscience, microbiology, and internal medicine share their process, challenges, and suggestions for the future of research.

Panelists:

Ted Abel, Professor, Chair, and DEO of...

Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Summer Internship Info Session promotional image

Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Summer Internship Info Session

Friday, February 4, 2022 9:00am to 10:00am
Virtual

Join Associate Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Jennifer New, to learn more about Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Summer 2022 internship opportunities. Internships are open to UI graduate students pursuing doctoral degrees.

Learn more about the available internships at https://uihumanitiesforthepublicgood.com/summer-2022-internships/.

The info session is free and open to all: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/91762226223. 

Practice-based, cross-disciplinary opportunities for...