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

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...

Rising Waters, Rapid Changes

Jennifer New
The first-ever University of Iowa graduate seminar in public history was offered this spring semester. The class’ end result, an exhibition and oral history about the flood of 2008, “Rising Waters, Rapid Changes," will be on display starting May 4 in the window of Hands Jewelers. The project is co-sponsored by the Obermann Center. Last year, graduate students in history petitioned the department for more offerings in the growing field of public history. Professor Jackie Rand (History, CLAS), who has worked at the Smithsonian Institution and served as a consultant to the Newberry Library in conjunction with her scholarship on the history of Native North America, state Indian policy, and law, decided to teach the class not only because of the students’ interests but her own growing commitment to public history.

Loyce Arthur Brings Carnaval to Iowa City

On June 9, Loyce Arthur (Theatre Arts, CLAS) will realize her dream of bringing Carnaval to Iowa City. The Iowa City Carnaval Parade will occur Sunday, June 9, in conjunction with the annual Iowa City Arts Festival. Carnaval is a strong, vibrant tradition in several island nations and Latin American countries as well as urban centers around the world, with community members working for a year in...

Redefining a Period

Cinema & Comparative Literature Professor Steve Ungar has spent the past year immersed in the history of documentary films in France between 1928-1962. What has especially captured his attention is how setting a specific film in various time frames affects our understanding of it. “What is a period? What is duration?” he asks with deceptive simplicity. As the recipient of the prestigious...

Obermann Afternoons Features Interdisciplinary Research on Aging

From Cells to Sensors: Interdisciplinary Research in Aging“I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now.” (Bob Dylan, 1964)People have long sought a Fountain of Youth. The Aging Mind and Brain Initiative (AMBI) uses science to uncover mechanisms of aging and develop ways to promote healthy brain aging across the lifespan. On April 30 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm at the Obermann Center, Dr. Matt...

Reflections on the First Iowa Humanities Festival

Reflections on the First Iowa Humanities Festival by Jennifer Shook: On Saturday, March 9, 2013, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies co-hosted the inaugural Iowa Humanities Festival (IHF) with Salisbury House and Gardens in Des Moines. I was one of more than 150 Iowans in attendance. Participants included National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Jim Leach, Iowa Representative Helen Miller...

Translating Whitman

“Poets to Come” in Five Languages: Ed Folsom has spent his career deciphering the works of Walt Whitman. After decades of reading and re-reading the quintessential American author, Folsom has had some unexpected new insights into his work by reading translations from German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Polish. In June 2011, Folsom, who is the Carver Professor in the Department of...

MOOCs: History, Hype, and Reality slideshow

MOOCS—History, Hype, and Reality: In February, UI Vice President for Research Dan Reed kicked off the Obermann Afternoons series with a talk detailing the history of so-called massive open online courses and their futures. Here are the slides from his talk.

Obermann Afternoons Explores Intersection Between Solar Cooker, Deforestation, and Women's Lives

Missing the Woods for the Trees: Mechanical Engineer and Feminist Anthropologist Connect the Local and Global — Women and children from northwest India spend more than 20 hours a week walking to existing stands of trees, cutting down wood, and carrying as much as 70 pounds home to use as cooking fuel. As part of an Obermann Working Group, H.S. Udaykumar (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering...

Obermann Working Groups Taking Applications for 2013-2014

Explore New Work, Share Research, Organize a Symposium or Grant Proposal! The Obermann Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups of faculty and advanced graduate students 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...
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Recent Events

Craft Critique Culture Graduate Conference: Black Legacies promotional image

Craft Critique Culture Graduate Conference: Black Legacies

Thursday, April 4, 2024 12:00pm

On April 4–6, 2024, English graduate students are hosting the 23rd annual Craft Critique Culture interdisciplinary graduate conference on the University of Iowa campus. This year’s conference addresses themes of “Black Legacies.” For this conference, “Black Legacies” is, first, a recognition and continued contribution to the history of Black Studies programs in colleges and universities, which emerged in the 1960s and ’70s. “Black Legacies” is also a way to honor and celebrate the power of...

2024 Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day promotional image

2024 Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day

Saturday, March 30, 2024 9:00am to 4:30pm
MacLean Hall

The daylong program includes workshops, interactive talks, math related games and panels of professionals with math-related jobs. Sonia Kovalevsky Day is an opportunity for high school female students to engage in a day of networking, mentoring, and fun! There is no cost to attend the event, and participants have opportunities to meet and talk with university professors and students. 

Fact Sheet

Where: MacLean Hall at the University of Iowa.
When: Saturday, March 30, 2024
Who: High-school...

What She Said — A Workshop on Empowering Women’s Voices in Celebration of Women’s History Month promotional image

What She Said — A Workshop on Empowering Women’s Voices in Celebration of Women’s History Month

Saturday, March 30, 2024 9:00am to 12:00pm

Our voices are an important indicator of who we are. Female-presenting speakers often learn self-undermining speaking habits from the people and society around them. How does the voice contribute to our sense of presence and how others perceive us? Tone, inflection, pace, and volume are some of the vocal elements that provide clues for the listener as to what we think and feel.

In this workshop, UI Theatre Arts professor Mary Mayo will invite you to develop a greater awareness of your voice and...

Stephen Best: “Baldwin's Inarticulacy”

Friday, March 29, 2024 3:30pm to 5:00pm
English-Philosophy Building

The Department of English and Obermann Center are hosting Stephen Best on Friday, March 29 at 3:30 p.m. in 304 EPB (Gerber). UI PhD candidate Sarah Frank will introduce Professor Best and UI Professor Deborah Whaley will serve as respondent.

Stephen Best (Berkeley) is Rachael Anderson Stageberg Chair in English and Director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities. One of the most important scholars of his generation, Professor Best has published two acclaimed monographs: "The Fugitive's...

New Histories for Reproductive Justice: Authors in Conversation promotional image

New Histories for Reproductive Justice: Authors in Conversation

Thursday, March 28, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Professors Natalie Lira, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Angela Hume, University of California, Berkeley, will be in conversation with each other about their recent books on the topics of abortion and the history of sterilization. Their work is deeply informed by and grounded in a reproductive justice framework.

Hosted by the Reproductive Justice Obermann Working Group

Global Visiting Scholar Presentation: Policy Engagement & Development for Women’s Reproductive Health in India promotional image

Global Visiting Scholar Presentation: Policy Engagement & Development for Women’s Reproductive Health in India

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 1:30pm to 2:20pm
College of Public Health Building

Sivakami is a Professor at the Center for Health and Social Sciences, School of Health Systems Studies (SHSS), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She was also the Chairperson of the Centre for Health and Social Sciences, one of the four centers in SHSS, between June 2015 to June 2021. Sivakami's broad research area includes Demography, Gender and Health. Her specific research areas of interest include Sexual and Reproductive Health including Menarche and Menstrual Hygiene...