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...

Recent Events

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2025) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2025)

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 5:00pm

The Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two or four weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world...

Keith Haring, Censorship, and the Power of Art | Panel Discussion promotional image

Keith Haring, Censorship, and the Power of Art | Panel Discussion

Thursday, September 26, 2024 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Join us for a panel discussion exploring the power of art and information in the face of censorship. This collaborative event by the Stanley Museum of Art, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Iowa City Public Library will explore the enduring impact of Keith Haring's work in the fight against HIV/AIDS. We'll discuss the historical and contemporary implications of banned books on sexual health and the importance of unrestricted access to information.

Panel members:
• Saba Vlach...

Cultivating Success: International Scholarship and Creative Work promotional image

Cultivating Success: International Scholarship and Creative Work

Thursday, September 26, 2024 1:30pm to 3:00pm
Virtual

Scholarly and creative research activity is a linchpin of faculty life at the University of Iowa. International collaboration has been demonstrated to boost the visibility and impact of research. This webinar will focus on the challenges and rewards of international scholarship, including cross-national research collaborations, grant proposals, ways to promote research to domestic and international audiences, the opportunities and potential pitfalls of publishing in non-US journals, and tactics...

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, September 19, 2024 5:00pm

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Books Ends—Obermann/OVPR 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 in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications for upcoming Book Ends workshops are due Sept. 19, 2024 (5 p.m.).

Application Deadline: Mellon Sawyer Seminar promotional image

Application Deadline: Mellon Sawyer Seminar

Monday, September 16, 2024 5:00pm

The Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminars program was established in 1994 to provide support for comparative research on historical and contemporary topics of scholarly significance. The seminars, named in honor of the Foundation’s long-serving third president, John E. Sawyer, bring together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields — mainly, but not exclusively, in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences — for intensive study of...

Ten Years Too Long: Making the Flint Water Crisis Public Archive promotional image

Ten Years Too Long: Making the Flint Water Crisis Public Archive

Wednesday, July 10, 2024 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

The Flint Water Crisis Public Archive aims to aid community leaders, researchers, and the general public in better understanding what happened during the Flint Water Crisis. Without our intervention, we risk losing access to documents released regarding the crisis, stripping us of the opportunity to learn about these important events and their ongoing implications for communities in Michigan and beyond. Panelists will include the project's founder, who will discuss the upcoming launch of the...