Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

University of Iowa junior faculty and graduate students at all stages are invited to join Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at the University of Pennsylvania Press—for a light breakfast and a conversation about turning an article, thesis, or dissertation into a book on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 9–10:30 a.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies library. Please bring any questions you have about that process or about scholarly publishing in general.

Register by Wednesday, September 30.

Biggins is...

Registration Deadline: Undergraduate Career Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Undergraduate Career Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

Interested in a career in publishing? In this session on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at noon at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press, will discuss his career path and editorial work. This is an opportunity for students to hear directly from a distinguished professional about the realities of the field and to gain insight into how to prepare for a career in publishing. Pizza will be provided!

Please register by Wednesday, September 30.

B...

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

UI faculty, students, and staff are invited to attend ask-me-anything group discussions with Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press—at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 1 at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Questions might address finding an editor, pitching a book, writing a book proposal, how the publishing process works, etc.

There will be two back-to-back discussions; you may attend one or both.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, September 30.

Free and open to all.

Bi...

The Language of Trees: A Conversation with Katie Holten promotional image

The Language of Trees: A Conversation with Katie Holten

Thursday, October 1, 2026 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Old Capitol Museum
The Anne Frank Initiative will welcome internationally recognized artist and environmental advocate Katie Holten to Iowa City for a conversation about her acclaimed project and book The Language of Trees.
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News

Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell notices the hues of people’s skin and sees possibilities. There are possibilities for how medical workers will treat us based on the color of our skin, how much money we’ll make, where we’ll go to school, and even who will be our romantic partner. Skin tone, says, Campbell, an Associate Professor in Sociology and an Obermann Fellow-in-Resident (Fall, 2011), shapes our experiences...
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Music Therapy

The nurses at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital were bothered by the high pain ratings from kids who had gone through spinal fusion for scoliosis. But one of the therapies that received high ratings for helping with pain was music therapy.This is how Mary Adamek, clinical professor of Music Therapy, and Kirsten Nelson, UI Children’s Hospital music therapist, got the idea to develop a...

Recent Events

Fall Institute on Teaching with Writing: Session 1 promotional image

Fall Institute on Teaching with Writing: Session 1

Friday, October 1, 2021 2:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Creating Meaningful Writing Tasks: Breaking Assignments into Smaller Parts

How do we design meaningful formal writing assignments that engage and motivate our students?  How do we use smaller writing-to-learn tasks that scaffold and prepare them for those formal assignments as well as inform us instructors how they are learning what we are teaching?  How do we build multimodal elements into assignments to expand meaning-making opportunities? 

This workshop will focus on designing and...

What Is Critical Race Theory?: Perspectives from Business, Law, & Sociology promotional image

What Is Critical Race Theory?: Perspectives from Business, Law, & Sociology

Thursday, September 30, 2021 7:00pm
Virtual

On July 1, 2021, Iowa House File 802 became law. Though the Act does not specifically mention “Critical Race Theory,” CRT was cited in discussions of the Act, and the Act restricts when and where the framework’s historical, social, and legal tools for understanding race-based inequities may be taught. But what is critical race theory, and how has it become the focus of acts and editorials? On Thursday, September 30, at 7:00 p.m. CST, a legal scholar, a sociologist, and a community advocate for...

Seeing Asian American Life through the Video Essay promotional image

Seeing Asian American Life through the Video Essay

Thursday, September 23, 2021 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Virtual

Join us for a virtual panel and screening with video essayist Kevin B. Lee, whose work both demonstrates how one can use the arts, literature, theory, and history to offer an understanding of human experience—in this case, of Korean Americans and other ethnic groups—and illustrates a relatively new form of research, the video essay.

We will screen Lee's video essays, including Mourning with Minari and Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox (see descriptions below). Afterward, Lee will join...

Trans Health & Medical Care: Where We Are, Where We Came From: A (Virtual) Obermann Conversation promotional image

Trans Health & Medical Care: Where We Are, Where We Came From: A (Virtual) Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Surfacing in the mid-twentieth century, yet shrouded in social stigma, transgender medicine is now a rapidly growing medical field. UI alumna and Michigan State University professor stef shuster shares findings from their new book, Trans Medicine (NYU Press, 2021) in discussion with Dr. Katie Imborek, co-founder of UIHC's LGBTQ Clinic, and community archivist and PhD candidate Aiden Bettine, whose work creates and demands gender-affirming community spaces.

Protests, Military Coup, and Burma's Future promotional image

Protests, Military Coup, and Burma's Future

Wednesday, September 22, 2021 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

Featuring Maxime Boutry, Associate Researcher, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, France

The double crisis, political and sanitary, that Myanmar is currently undergoing, sheds new light on the political and social transformations that have affected the country over the last ten years. Whilst the February 1st military coup literally kidnapped the hopes of a whole generation of citizens thirsting for democracy, it also revealed a failed...

What Do We Mean by Humanities Research Now? — An Obermann roundtable promotional image

What Do We Mean by Humanities Research Now? — An Obermann roundtable

Friday, September 17, 2021 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

Across the country, humanities centers act as incubators for cutting edge questions, creative collaborations, publicly engaged projects, and experimental forms of humanities scholarship. To kick off our conversation about the challenges new forms of research pose to existing metrics, we’ve gathered directors of four humanities centers. Join us as they offer their perspectives on emerging humanities research questions, methods, and formats, and the challenges these pose to current metrics...