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

Was the Word: Crossing the Line

Crossing Borders, a community storytelling project, crossingborders.us, started by Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows Raquel Baker (English, CLAS), Ted Gutsche (Journalism, CLAS), and Daniel Kinney (Art Education, College of Education), will host this month's Was The Word. This is Working Group Theatre's monthly storytelling, poetry, and music show at the Englert Theatre, with benefits going to...

Udaykumar and the Solar Cooker Project

H.S. Udaykumar (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering) had a chance coffee shop encounter with his friend and colleague, R. Rajagopal (Geography, CLAS), which became the first in a series of events that would dramatically change his life—down to what he eats and reads.“ I was at T-spoons, totally oblivious,” recalls Uday, “and Raj accosts me and announces, ‘You are going to India! There is...

Working Groups Look Ahead to Second Year

2011-2012 has been the inaugural year for the Obermann Working Groups. This program, modeled on successful programs at several centers around the country, is intended to provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups of faculty and advanced graduate students with a shared intellectual interest. We have had four Working Groups this year: Intergenre Explorations, Women's Health and...
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Katie Porter's New Book Examines Effects of Consumer Debt

In 2008, Katie Porter (pictured below), then a UI College of Law professor, proposed a topic for the Obermann Summer Seminar on consumer debt in America. For two weeks the following summer, she and a group of eleven participant—including professors in law, psychology, urban and regional planning and medicine—met at Obermann to discuss different perspectives on this topic. Each participant came...

Interdisciplinarity is Focus of Obermann Workshop

Richard Handler, Director of the Program in Global Development Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia will lead a discussion on March 5 at 3:00 pm based on his career as a scholar, teacher and administrator whose work cuts across the geographical and disciplinary boundaries. This informal conversation -- "The Art of Interdisciplinarity" -- will take place in the...

Humanities and Public Life Series Announced

Teresa Mangum, Director of the Obermann Center, is co-editing a new book series for The University of Iowa Press with Anne Valk, Associate Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. Humanities and Public Life will feature books examining projects using the arts and humanities to promote community building and civic change. These...

Recent Events

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price promotional image

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price

Saturday, April 1, 2023 4:30pm to 6:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Miryam Charles is a Haitian-Canadian director, producer and cinematographer living in Montreal. She has produced several short and feature films. Her films have been presented in various festivals in Quebec and internationally. Her first feature film This House was presented at the Berlinale, the AFI film festival this year and was also included in the TIFF Top 10...

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program promotional image

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program

Saturday, April 1, 2023 2:30pm to 4:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Janaína Oliveira is a curator and researcher who holds a doctorate in history and was a Fulbright scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University (USA). She is one of the founders of FICINE—Fórum Itinerante de Cinema Negro. Her research focuses on Black Brazilian and aphrodiasporic cinemas and also on African cinematographies. She has served as a...

Frequências: Interventions by Janaína Oliveira, Yasmina Price, and Cauleen Smith promotional image

Frequências: Interventions by Janaína Oliveira, Yasmina Price, and Cauleen Smith

Saturday, April 1, 2023 1:00pm to 2:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Janaína Oliveira will present "Frequencies of Kalunga." 
Kalunga: a concept originating from Bantu cultures with multiple meanings. For some, the line that marks the limits between the worlds of the living and the ancestors, the line of the horizon and of saudade (longing), which divides but also aggregates. It can also be a portal or the core of the vital energy...

Frequências Screening: Director’s Choice programmed by Christopher Harris promotional image

Frequências Screening: Director’s Choice programmed by Christopher Harris

Saturday, April 1, 2023 10:15am to 12:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Christopher Harris makes films and video installations that read African American historiography through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. His work employs manually and photo-chemically altered appropriated moving images, staged re-enactments of archival artifacts and interrogations of documentary conventions. His current project is a series of...

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award promotional image

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award

Saturday, April 1, 2023 (all day)

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora

From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: "Black Utopia LP" Performance by Cauleen Smith promotional image

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: "Black Utopia LP" Performance by Cauleen Smith

Friday, March 31, 2023 4:30pm to 6:30pm
Becker Communication Studies Building

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Please note that this event has been moved from the Stanley Art Museum to 101 BCSB.

Join us for Cauleen Smith's captivating audio-visual performance, Black Utopia LP. Combining 35mm slide projection with the artist's vinyl LP, this 90-minute "film without film" offers a unique cinematic experience. Emerging from...