Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression promotional image

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression

Saturday, September 26, 2026 3:00pm
Voxman Music Building

“Eleanor Waltzes” honors First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt through performances of songs and poetry created and sent to her by American women. The event will also feature an exhibit of materials from the Iowa Women’s Archives and a “making do” reception with 1930s recipes. “Eleanor Waltzes” is part of Sounding the Nation at 250, a series of commemorative concerts surrounding the U.S. Semiquincentennial sponsored by the Society for American Music.

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, 3 p.m.

Recital Hall, Voxman...

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...

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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

How to Stop Giving Graduate Students Bad Advice: Mentoring Workshop promotional image

How to Stop Giving Graduate Students Bad Advice: Mentoring Workshop

Friday, May 17, 2019 9:00am to 4:00pm
English-Philosophy Building

This interactive workshop asks formal and informal mentors of graduate students in the humanities and across the humanistic disciplines to take stock of the short and long term impact of the advice offered by departments, faculty members, and others. How would mentoring change if we started with the premise that “being a professor” was only one — and an increasingly less likely — reason to undertake advanced studies in the humanities?  If we thought of mentoring as a shared responsibility for...

Scoring the Screen: The Power of Music in Film promotional image

Scoring the Screen: The Power of Music in Film

Wednesday, April 17, 2019 4:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

How do composers, producers, and directors use music in film? How does it help to tell stories, complicate plots, create atmosphere, and manipulate audiences' emotional responses? How is it selected, scored, and recorded? Join Kaitlyn Busbee (independent filmmaker), Corey Creekmur (Professor of Cinematic Arts), Rebecca Fons (Programming Director at FilmScene), and Nathan Platte (Professor of Music) as they discuss the role—and the power—of music in film.

Kaitlyn Busbee is an independent...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Closing Roundtable Reflections promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium: Closing Roundtable Reflections

Saturday, April 6, 2019 4:15pm to 4:45pm
Iowa City Public Library

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Lecture: "Cultural Representation of Idiocy in a Modernist (Eugenic) Era" promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Lecture: "Cultural Representation of Idiocy in a Modernist (Eugenic) Era"

Saturday, April 6, 2019 3:00pm to 4:15pm
Iowa City Public Library

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Panel: Technology + Arts + Design: Retrofitting Worlds and Bodies promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Panel: Technology + Arts + Design: Retrofitting Worlds and Bodies

Saturday, April 6, 2019 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Lecture: "504 and Beyond: Disability Politics and the Black Panther Party" promotional image

Misfitting Humanities Symposium Lecture: "504 and Beyond: Disability Politics and the Black Panther Party"

Saturday, April 6, 2019 11:15am to 12:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how...