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...

View more events

Spacer

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

Dear Kitty: The Act of Keeping a Diary promotional image

Dear Kitty: The Act of Keeping a Diary

Wednesday, March 30, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

As we await the arrival of the Anne Frank Tree, which will be planted on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on April 29, 2022, we encourage people of all ages to read the book that is at the heart of this event. Better yet—read it in community!

To provide context to your reading, we’re offering three in-person discussions at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St., Iowa City). All of the discussions are free and open to the general public. 

In this second session, Dr. Kirsten Kumpf Baele...

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism

Tuesday, March 29, 2022 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Virtual

The Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research defines AR as “practice-based, practice-led research in the arts,” often an interdisciplinary creative research that acts as a “driver for critical thinking, creativity, and open innovation.” Many artists understand their art-making to be a means of asking soaring questions; of helping audiences grasp the complexity of wicked problems; of shocking, literally moving, or seducing participants into risking new solutions; on enacting the art of...

Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey promotional image

Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 3:00pm to 4:00pm
University of Iowa Pentacrest

Join us for a presentation from the Meskwaki Language Preservation Director Wayne Pushetonequa, "Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey."

Free and open to all. Reception to follow.

Co-sponsored by the Native American Student Association; the UI Old Capitol Museum; the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies; the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program; and Native American Council.

Amplifying Women's Voices: A Faculty & Guest Artist Recital Featuring the Lanta Horn Duo promotional image

Amplifying Women's Voices: A Faculty & Guest Artist Recital Featuring the Lanta Horn Duo

Thursday, March 10, 2022 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building

This concert will be livestreamed here: https://music.uiowa.edu/about/live-stream-concert-schedule

This recital is titled "Amplifying Women's Voices" and consists of music written by women, primarily in the late-20th and 21st centuries. Women are a significantly underrepresented group in the field of brass instrument performance. Some studies suggest reasons for this inequity stems from lack of role models, and others point to persistent stereotypes about women who play brass. Reports continue...

Humanities and Public Life in the Age of COVID promotional image

Humanities and Public Life in the Age of COVID

Thursday, March 10, 2022 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

How have engaged artists and scholars in the University of Iowa Press Humanities & Public Life Book Series responded pragmatically, pedagogically, and philosophically to the last two years?
 
The last few years have raised tough questions for publicly engaged artists and humanists. COVID shut down their projects, politics have divided communities, and protests against systemic racism have demanded that engaged scholars re-examine how they work with public partners and with students. As one way...

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT II) promotional image

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT II)

Wednesday, March 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...