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.

View more events

Spacer

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

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...

Recent Events

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta promotional image

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta

Friday, April 7, 2023 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) (she/her) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast Media...

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College promotional image

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College

Friday, April 7, 2023 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Biology Building East

Patricia (Patty) Brennan is interested in the morphological evolution of genital morphology in vertebrates and the mechanisms that drive genital diversification, sexual conflict in particular. She has a BSc in Marine Biology from her native Colombia, where she studied the cardiac physiology of marine mammals. She went on to work in the Galapagos Islands aboard a research vessel (R/V Odyssey). Brennan completed her PhD dissertation at Cornell University, where she studied the breeding biology and...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens

Wednesday, April 5 7:00pm to Saturday, April 22, 2023 9:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This three-week screening and discussion series celebrates the pioneering work of Black women filmmakers from the 1970s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the first-ever Black women’s film festival, the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, the series features rare and recently restored works from groundbreaking directors including Maya Angelou, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Kathleen Collins, Monica Freeman, and Zeinabu irene Davis, among others. The majority of the screenings...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Short Films by Maya Angelou, Cheryl Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Short Films by Maya Angelou, Cheryl Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 7:00pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Come to FilmScene for a literary-themed selection of short films by and about poets. The evening will include Maya Angelou's directorial debut, Cheryl Fabio's cinematic portrait of her mother, the poet/performer/musician Sarah Webster Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson's recent documentary about the Enikalley Coffeehouse, a key space for Black LGBTQ artmaking and activism in 1980s Washington, D.C. Cheryl Fabio and Michelle Parkerson will join us by Zoom for a post-screening conversation moderated by...

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price promotional image

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price

Saturday, April 1, 2023 4:30pm to 6:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Miryam Charles is a Haitian-Canadian director, producer and cinematographer living in Montreal. She has produced several short and feature films. Her films have been presented in various festivals in Quebec and internationally. Her first feature film This House was presented at the Berlinale, the AFI film festival this year and was also included in the TIFF Top 10...

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program promotional image

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program

Saturday, April 1, 2023 2:30pm to 4:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Janaína Oliveira is a curator and researcher who holds a doctorate in history and was a Fulbright scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University (USA). She is one of the founders of FICINE—Fórum Itinerante de Cinema Negro. Her research focuses on Black Brazilian and aphrodiasporic cinemas and also on African cinematographies. She has served as a...