Upcoming Events

Book Ends Information Session (virtual) promotional image

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)

Tuesday, February 3, 2026 8:30am to 9:00am
Virtual

Book Ends 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. Read more about the program.

Interested applicants are invited to learn more about the program and application process at a virtual information session on Tuesday, February 3, at 8:30 a.m. Obermann Center Director Luis Martín-Estudillo...

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 8:30am to 4:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete tips and operational strategies that support planning and longer-term sustainability.

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

The Research Development Office is hosting an in person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

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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

Marissa Good (left) and Selveyah Gamblin (right) at the Student Undergraduate Research Festival, April 2023 (photo by Louise Seamster)

Data Justice for Flint: Seamster Leads Effort to Build Accessible Archive with Humanities Without Walls Grand Research Challenge Project

Lauren Burrell Cox
For seven years, the Obermann Center has been a partner in the Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls consortium led by Professor Antoinette Burton at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Our graduate students have attended HWW’s Career Diversity Summer Workshops, and several faculty members have worked with cross-institutional Grand Research Challenge teams. This year, we are delighted that Assistant Professor Louise Seamster (Departments of Sociology & Criminology and African American Studies) was selected as the P.I. of a team focused on "The Flint Water Disaster Public Archive." The ”Flint Water Disaster Public Archive” will re-home public data that has been largely inaccessible to Flint communities—a form of data justice that is of urgent relevance to the history, present, and future of those communities. The project is a collaboration among the University of Iowa, University of Michigan–Flint, and the Flint Democracy Defense League. Below is Obermann Assistant Director Lauren Burrell Cox’s interview with Louise Seamster about the project.
FilmScene exterior

Obermann Center symposium’s ‘Frequências’ film festival explores Afro-Brazilian cinema

Zhenya Loughney
The Daily Iowan
The door of no return; the reinvention of belonging; Blackness in Brazil; these topics and more were the focus of this year’s Obermann Humanities Symposium. Presented in Iowa City by the Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Project Award, the “Frequências” festival displayed lectures, cinema screenings, interventions, exhibits, and performances by contemporary Afro-Brazilian artists and scholars discussing Black diaspora.
Ariani Friedl

Building Bridges: The MOSTRA Brazilian Film Festival

Cris Lira
Cris Lira: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how the idea for the Mostra: Brazilian Film Series has started.   Ariani Friedl: I am Brazilian, 'gaúcha' (RS), and I have been living in the United States for over 50 years.  I worked at the University of Illinois @ Chicago for over 20 years as Director of the John Nuveen Center for International Affairs.  I was a member of the Board of Directors of the International Latino Cultura Center for over 15 years and also organized the Chicago Latino Film Festival in 2006 when our Director was on a leave of absence.  I have the fortune of meeting many of our Brazilian filmmakers who attended the Latino Festival which always brings 3 - 4 Brazilian films.   The question always posed by our Brazilian filmmakers was:  "How can we better publicize and where else can we show our Brazilian cinema in the United States?" The idea of creating a festival with only Brazilian films in the Chicago area was born from this and it developed with another idea of bringing films with social conscience to be discussed in universities and other cultural and educational centers. C.L.: Could you please tell us how do you select the films to be featured in the series?  A.F.: I bring to our festival every year, different Brazilian film critics and filmmakers.  I also have collaborators in SP who attend many of our film festivals in Brazil and help me collect a list of films with relevant social content, and also films related to our culture (art, music, literature, dance...), history, environment, etc...  We compile these in a document with trailers and synopses and present them to my Curatorial Committee (composed of professors, critics, and experts in cinema) for a decision in which films we will invite to our festival.
Lauren Burrell Cox

Lauren Burrell Cox is Obermann's New Assistant Director!

We're happy to announce that Lauren Burrell Cox has become Obermann's new Assistant Director! She'll be working with our director, Teresa Mangum, to design, plan, promote and conduct programs and to oversee communications for the Center.
Frequencias codirectors

Frequências Symposium: A Discussion with Three Co-organizers

Daniel Vorwerk
International Programs
Taking Brazil’s new Black cinema as its point of departure, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora will feature the emerging wave of young Afro-Brazilian filmmakers, curators, programmers, and scholars whose art and scholarship have already had an impact on international cinema. Organized by Christopher Harris, Janaína Oliveira, and Cristiane Lira, this 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium and International Programs Major Projects Award takes place March 30 – April 1, 2023, in Iowa City. Below is a discussion with Harris, Oliveira, and Lira.
Hand holding up mirror, reflecting peninsula near bridge

Frequências symposium a historical gathering of Brazilian filmmakers and scholars on the UI campus

Daniel Vorwerk
International Programs
Taking Brazil’s new Black cinema as its point of departure, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora brings together filmmakers, artists, scholars, and critics from across the globe to explore new ways of thinking about the Black diaspora. This 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium and International Programs Major Projects Award takes place March 30 – April 1, 2023, in Iowa City. Organized by Christopher Harris, F. Wendell Miller associate professor of cinematic arts at the University of Iowa; Janaína Oliveira, curator and researcher at the Federal Instituto of Rio de Janeiro; and Cristiane Lira, supervisor of Portuguese at the University of Georgia, the symposium will feature the emerging wave of young Afro-Brazilian filmmakers, curators, programmers, and scholars whose art and scholarship have already had an impact on international cinema.
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Recent Events

Registration Deadline: Graduate Student Breakfast & Talk with Sara Jo Cohen, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Graduate Student Breakfast & Talk with Sara Jo Cohen, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 5:00pm
111 Church Street

UI graduate students at all stages are invited to join Editor Cohen for breakfast and a talk focused on turning an article, thesis, or dissertation into a book. The session will take place on Tuesday, November 4, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Obermann Center library.

Register by Oct. 21, 5 p.m. Learn more and register at https://obermann.uiowa.edu/obermann-editor-residence.

Cohen is Editorial Director at University of Michigan Press, where she acquires titles in music, theater and performance...

Application Deadline: Editorial Consultations with Sara Jo Cohen, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Application Deadline: Editorial Consultations with Sara Jo Cohen, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Monday, October 13, 2025 5:00pm
111 Church Street

UI faculty, students, and staff are invited to apply for a 20- 30-minute editorial consultation with the Obermann Center's 2025 Editor-in-Residence, Sara Jo Cohen, at the Obermann Center library on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025.

Potential discussion topics could include finding an editor, pitching a book, writing a book proposal, how the publishing process works, etc. Applications are due Oct. 13 by 5 p.m.

Learn more and apply at https://obermann.uiowa.edu/obermann-editor-residence.

Cohen is Editorial...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026)

Wednesday, October 8, 2025 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...

5/2: How Polarity Yields Five Codes of Music - A Syzygy with S/Z. Presentation 1: From Polarity to Plurality promotional image

5/2: How Polarity Yields Five Codes of Music - A Syzygy with S/Z. Presentation 1: From Polarity to Plurality

Monday, October 6, 2025 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building
The first of seven presentations of an intergalactic music poetics. Drawing together ancient wisdom and modern science, this poetics aims at transmuting one’s experience of everything as music and living joyfully even as we work confidently toward an abundant future.
Application Deadline: Faculty Book Proposal Workshop with Sara Jo Cohen, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Application Deadline: Faculty Book Proposal Workshop with Sara Jo Cohen, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, October 1, 2025 5:00pm
111 Church Street

For this workshop, 4–5 UI faculty members will submit book proposal drafts for a collaborative feedback session on Nov. 5 led by Sara Jo Cohen, the Obermann Center's 2025 Editor-in-Residence. The session is designed to help authors write a compelling book proposal, with a focus on crafting a strong pitch, identifying target audiences, and outlining the project’s structure. The workshop’s goal is for participants to walk away with a strong and cohesive book proposal, increasing their chance of...

The Fourth Age of Life: The Challenges of Aging and the Joys of Connecting — An Obermann Counterpoint Event promotional image

The Fourth Age of Life: The Challenges of Aging and the Joys of Connecting — An Obermann Counterpoint Event

Wednesday, October 1, 2025 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Voxman Music Building

What does it truly mean to grow and thrive as we age? In this thought-provoking Obermann Counterpoint event, Mercedes Bern-Klug (School of Social Work, CLAS) and Amy Colbert (Tippie College of Business) will explore the diverse ways we live, adapt, and flourish in our later years, whether we choose to navigate life independently or in a communal care setting. Against the backdrop of a growing loneliness epidemic among older adults, the two will discuss the health and social benefits of nursing...