Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

The Research Development Office is hosting an in-person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

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...

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News

Lake Effect

In January 2012, Lisa Johnson participated in the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. Her final project was a collaborative arts ensemble between women at the Iowa Correctional Institute for Women and community partners. During the intense week-long Institute working with the public was front and center in Johnson’s mind, but having coffee with farmers near Estherville or...

Iowa Humanities Festival Features UI Faculty, NEH Chair Leach

Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will speak at the first ever Iowa Humanities Festival in Des Moines on March 9. Collectors and collecting is the theme of this inaugural event, which brings together scholars, museum directors, librarians, and personal collectors from across the state...

Rewiring the Classroom

Teaching Teachers About Technology: This month, college educators are uniting at the University of Iowa to discuss the digital classroom, as well as teaching others how to use the powerful tools of the 21st century. On February 23, 2013, “Rewiring the Classroom,”a forum on digital practices and philosophies for the college classroom, will take place at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and will...

Chicago Humanities Festival / ACLS Fellowship

Public Engagement Opportunity: The Chicago Humanities Festival has been selected as a host institution for the 2013 Public Fellows Program of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The Mellon-funded initiative will bring two recent humanities PhD into the Chicago Humanities Festival organization, each serving as Program Manager for a period of two years (July 2013 through July 2015). This...

MOOCs: History, Hype, and Reality, a talk by VPR Dan Reed

Vice President for Research Dan Reed Launches Obermann Afternoons—occasional informal presentations on recent discoveries, compelling research questions, and current events. The New York Times declared 2012 "The Year of the MOOC" citing recent multi-million dollar ventures that make college and university courses available to large audiences via...

Judith Pascoe

In 2003 when Judith Pascoe (English, CLAS) joined an Obermann Cmiel Research Semester, “Sounding the Voice,” she had a topic in mind but did not anticipate that it would become the center of her work for the next few years. Several years later, The Sarah Siddons Audio Files won the prestigious Barnard Hewitt Book Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. The award was a major stamp of...

Author Luis Alberto Urrea Reads from New Novel

Author Luis Alberto Urrea will read from his new novel, Queen of America, during a reading on December 11 at 7 pm at The Englert Theatre. Urrea will be joined by Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, fellow writer and co-director of The Latino Midwest, the 2012-13 Obermann Humanities Symposium. Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother....

2013 Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows

Eighteen UI graduate students from across campus, representing four different colleges, have been selected for the seventh annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. This year's co-directors, Carolyn Colvin (Teaching & Learning) and Charles Connerly (Urban & Regional Planning), and Senior Graduate Fellow Eric Zimmer (History) will lead the weeklong program from January 14-18...

Lunchtime Lecture Series Focuses on Public Humanities in Contemporary Culture

PDH4L, or Public Digital Humanities for Lunch, is a new series sponsored by the Digital Studio for the Public Humanities to explore how digital technology is changing humanities, and explores some of the promises, challenges and surprises of digital learning. The talks are all in Room 3052 of the Main Library.Two talks are forthcoming in November. On November 15, UI HASTAC Scholar Audrey Altman...

Barbara Eckstein

Barbara Eckstein is a Fall 2012 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and a University of Iowa professor of English. She is also on the faculty of the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) 
and is affiliated with International Programs. She’s previously served as Associate Provost for Academic Administration. Currently, she is in the early phases of an extensive study of the...
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Recent Events

NEA Big Read | Free Book Pick Up promotional image

NEA Big Read | Free Book Pick Up

Monday, January 20, 9:00am to Wednesday, February 12, 2025 5:00pm
Stanley Museum of Art

The Stanley Museum of Art will launch its National Endowment for the Arts Big Read program on Jan. 20, 2025, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

This event features a community wide reading of the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. Pick up a free copy of Beloved at 12 pickup locations across Iowa City between Jan. 20 and Feb. 12, 2025. 

Register here to pickup a free copy: https://uiowa.doubleknot.com/event/nea-big-reads-beloved-by-toni-morriso...

An email confirmation must be presented to claim a book...

2025 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing promotional image

2025 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

This is the first in a series of two workshops (via Zoom) designed for instructors interested in incorporating more writing into content-oriented courses. All faculty and TAs are welcome, particularly those teaching in departments other than Rhetoric and English. Workshops are led by members of the Obermann Teaching with Writing Working Group.

REGISTER HERE for one or both sessions. Both sessions will be held via Zoom.

Session I, Monday, Jan. 6, 10 a.m.– noon: Low-Stakes Writing Assignments...

2025 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing promotional image

2025 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing

Monday, January 6, 2025 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

This is the first in a series of two workshops (via Zoom) designed for instructors interested in incorporating more writing into content-oriented courses. All faculty and TAs are welcome, particularly those teaching in departments other than Rhetoric and English. Workshops are led by members of the Obermann Teaching with Writing Working Group.

REGISTER HERE for one or both sessions. Both sessions will be held via Zoom.

Session I, Monday, Jan. 6, 10 a.m.– noon: Low-Stakes Writing Assignments...

Lecture: Met Opera Tosca in Historical Perspective

Friday, November 15, 2024 5:00pm
Voxman Music Building

Professor Anna Barker will introduce the opera Tosca and provide a historical perspective. Streaming from the MET Opera will be in Marcus Theater Sycamore on Saturday, Nov. 23 at noon. 

Learn in a fun way about one of the most-often performed operas. Free and open to all. 

Hosted by the Opera Studies Obermann Working Group

Pecha Kucha "Engage the Innovators" promotional image

Pecha Kucha "Engage the Innovators"

Thursday, November 7, 2024 10:00am to 4:00pm
University Capitol Centre

Join us for the University of Iowa’s very first Mental Health and Well-Being Pecha Kucha.

Pecha Kucha, Japanese for chit-chat, is a fast paced, imagery-focused workshop that elevates the voices of our campus “mental health and well-being innovators.”

Attend these workshops to:
•    Discover new ways of thinking about work from a mental health & well-being lens
•    Get tangible takeaways about innovative mental health and well-being practices occurring on campus
•    Create connections to...

Counterpoint: The Politics of (International) Writing promotional image

Counterpoint: The Politics of (International) Writing

Monday, October 14, 2024 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building

How do politics affect what poets or novelists write, and even how they write it? How does literature inform political discourse? What is cultural diplomacy, why is it so important, and what is the UI’s role in promoting it?

For this inaugural event in the Obermann Center’s new Counterpoint public conversation series, Christopher Merrill — poet, nonfiction writer, translator, editor, and director of the UI’s renowned International Writing Program — and Loren Glass, a historian of creative writing...