Upcoming Events

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective promotional image

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective

Friday, January 23, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This program offers accountability to artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of writing project (articles, essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, etc.) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.

In spring 2026, four writing groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St. Each group will meet once a week for 1.5 hours, beginning the week of...

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award promotional image

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award

Monday, February 2, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

The new Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award recognizes individuals or teams whose trajectories have engaged diverse disciplines to produce insights that would be unattainable within a single academic silo. These scholars cultivate collaborative work, fostering dialogue across academic fields and institutional units. Their research or creative work engages with foundational questions that resonate across society. By recognizing interdisciplinary excellence, the Obermann Center for...

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026)

Saturday, February 14, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Fall 2026 Obermann International Fellowships. This program offers dedicated space, time, and funding for interdisciplinary scholars to collaborate on innovative research at the University of Iowa. Up to eight international fellowships will be granted every academic year. Applicants must be active researchers at an accredited institution of higher learning outside of the United States or independent researchers/artists with...

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Tuesday, February 17, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends—Obermann 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.

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

News

We Did So Much Beyond the Home - Jeannette Gabriel talks about the Jewish Women in Iowa Project

Jeannette Gabriel, a 2013 Graduate Institute Fellow and a PhD candidate in Teaching and Learning, has been crisscrossing the state in an attempt to document a disappearing community. As a graduate research assistant in the Iowa Women's Archives, Gabriel is currently the backbone of the Jewish Women in Iowa Project. This special project was initiated by Joan Lipsky, a former Iowa state...

Kate Kedley - Building Solidarity Between Honduras and Iowa

Artists Take Back Public Space in Honduras As Obermann Graduate Fellow in 2013, Kate Kedley learned to frame research as publicly engaged scholarship, and since then has continued to look for ways to remain in solidarity with the communities and people where she researches. Specifically, her dissertation is an ethnographic study about education and teaching in the Central American country of...

Beyond the Shiny New Toy—Next Frontier for Digital Humanities

Last summer, a group of three scholars commandeered the Obermann Center attic for a month with the goal of pushing their digital humanities (DH) project into a new phase. The team of Blaine Greteman (English, University of Iowa), James Lee (English, Grinnell College), and David Eichmann (School of Library and Information Science...

Teaching Sustainability—Across the Disciplines

Teach-in Focuses on Sustainability Curricula Across Campus Across the globe, people strive for sustainable development, which the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development famously defined as a way of living that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” How can the University of Iowa campus address the great...

Marilynne Robinson to Deliver Lecture, "The American Scholar Now"

As part of the Creative Matters series, Marilynne Robinson will give a lecture titled "The American Scholar Now," on December 9 from 5:30-6:30 pm at The Englert Theatre. This event is free and open to the public. Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Lila, winner of...

2016 Graduate Institute Fellows Announced

Seventeen 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, Craig Just (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Jennifer Kayle (Dance), and Senior Graduate Fellows Anna Swanson (Cinematic Arts and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies) and Jessica...

Recent Events

Graphic Histories: A Discussion with Rachel Williams and Karlos Hill promotional image

Graphic Histories: A Discussion with Rachel Williams and Karlos Hill

Thursday, April 15, 2021 11:30am to 12:30pm
Virtual

Two scholar-artists will share their experience with translating historical research to a graphic form. Rachel Williams recently published two books, Run Home If You Don't Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943 (University of North Carolina Press), which uses incorporating firsthand accounts collected by the NAACP, and Elegy for Mary Turner (Penguin Randomhouse), a haunting depiction of American racial violence and lynching. Hill, who directs the African and African American Studies...

Approaches to Inclusive Graduate Admissions: Workshop with Dean Todd Butler promotional image

Approaches to Inclusive Graduate Admissions: Workshop with Dean Todd Butler

Friday, April 2, 2021 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Virtual

In collaboration with CLAS and the Graduate College, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative will host Interim Dean Todd Butler (Washington State University College of Arts & Sciences) for a reprisal of a workshop he recently held for the Modern Language Association on inclusive admissions. During the virtual workshop, Dean Butler will describe how Washington State University redesigned admissions in response to students’...

Podcasting with Purpose: Rebecca Nagle promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: Rebecca Nagle

Thursday, April 1, 2021 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Calling all podcasters, podcast enthusiasts, and podcast newbies! Learn from expert podcasters about the craft of podcasting with purpose, from the nuts and bolts of recording and editing audio to the intellectual and creative labor of audio storytelling. As part of our goal to prepare graduate students for a wide range of careers serving the public good, Humanities for the Public Good is exploring new and innovative methods of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making. The Podcasting...

The Writing-Enriched Curriculum: A discussion with Pamela Flash promotional image

The Writing-Enriched Curriculum: A discussion with Pamela Flash

Thursday, April 1, 2021 2:30pm
Virtual

In this discussion, Pamela Flash (University of Minnesota) will introduce the Writing-Enriched Curriculum (WEC) model and will think with local stakeholders about affordances and challenges associated with its potential implementation at the University of Iowa. WEC offers a departmental model designed to (1) support the curricular integration of relevant modes of writing and writing instruction and (2) to increase the rate at which student writing meets locally-generated faculty expectations...

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference) promotional image

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference)

Friday, March 26 10:00am to Saturday, March 27, 2021 3:00pm
Virtual

When COVID-19 interrupted the late spring events and culmination of the yearlong Mellon Sawyer Seminar Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging, we didn't know that the events would eventually end up online and across institutions. In 2019-20, seminar co-directors Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Ariana Ruiz, and Rene Rocha worked across disciplines to organize six symposia, a film series, and a podcast. With Wanzer-Serrano now in the Communications Department at the University of Texas...

STEM and Race: Can We Talk? promotional image

STEM and Race: Can We Talk?

Saturday, March 20, 2021 1:00pm to 4:15pm
Virtual

Can We Talk?

"Can We Talk?" explores the issue of ‘social belonging’ in the context of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and the effect it has on the lives of underrepresented people of color (UR-POC) who are pursuing an education or career in STEM, or who have decided to leave because of an overwhelming feeling of not belonging. The film has screened at venues across the U.S., at scientific conferences, colleges and universities, federal agencies, and for non-profit organizations. In...