Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Thursday, April 1, 2027 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 10 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 who have not received a SIP award in the past academic year.

Application...

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30)

Wednesday, April 7, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups led by faculty that may include advanced graduate students, staff members, and community members with a shared intellectual interest.

Groups have used this opportunity to share their work in progress or draw up a set of readings they want to undertake and discuss. Others have organized conferences, applied for grants together, written articles together, designed new courses, taken field trips, organized...

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News

Stephanie Miracle

UI professor Stephanie Miracle on the demands and rewards of interdisciplinary work

Stephanie Miracle’s ensemble is large. Mechanical engineers, musicians, hydroscientists, robots, zoological specimens, filmmakers, parking ramps, at least one professor of 18th-century literature, and the Iowa River all have found a place in collaborations honored this year by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.
Walter Biggins

Six questions for Walter Biggins, our 2026 editor-in-residence

You’ve worked for a number of robust institutions in the last fifteen years. Do you feel the role of a university press has changed in campus life since you began your career? If so, what do you see as the most important ways that presses can engage and support their intellectual ecosystems today, beyond publishing books?

I started in university-press publishing in September 1999, so the number is closer to (ulp!) 27 years. In that timespan, I’ve worked for three presses: University Press of Mississippi, University of Georgia Press, and now University of Pennsylvania Press (Penn Press).

Amy Hildreth Chen

Meet our new assistant director, Amy Chen

Hi, Amy! So happy to sit down with you after your first few weeks on Church Street. I was hoping we could talk about Iowa first—it’s played a significant role in your academic history. Could you talk a little about your journey and how you’ve come to the Obermann Center?

Sure! I went to Iowa as an undergraduate, double majoring in English and political science. I was drawn to campus from my hometown of Wichita, Kansas, by Iowa’s reputation as the Writing University. I did all sorts of things as an undergraduate. I was a resident assistant, Writing Fellow, editor-in-chief of the undergraduate literary magazine, and research assistant on top of writing an honors thesis and taking graduate classes in English. After graduation, I really needed a break! I went away to travel, then pursued my PhD at Emory University and completed a postdoc at the University of Alabama.

IDRG group working

Variants of Uncertain Significance

“I suppose what’s always speaking to me in the back of my mind is my mother,” says Benjamin Darbro. “She’s really the one who inspired this problem solving.” My question to University of Iowa professors John Manak, of the Department of Biology (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and Darbro, of the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics (Carver College of Medicine), was about the nature of their work: What is your relationship to complexity?
headshot dempsey

Meet Reid Dempsey

Hi, Reid! You’re the new program coordinator at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (OCAS). Can you explain your role?

Hi! Certainly. It’s a blend of responsibilities, but mostly communications support. I help with interviews, social media, outreach, and recordkeeping. I’m also learning from the Obermann staff—Jenna, Erin, Amy, and Luis—how an organism like OCAS supports research and intellectual life inside and outside the University of Iowa. Their combined experience and skill set can be a little dazzling, and the work feels special. Not every school has something like the Obermann Center on campus, dedicated to sharing resources, building networks, and thinking about the best ways to make things happen.

Bella Spilotro

Behind the Zines: Learning from Artists at Public Space One

This summer, I had the pleasure of interning at Public Space One (PS1), an artist-led, community-driven contemporary art center, for eight weeks as a student intern supporting grant administration, research, documentation, and publication development for the multi-year Alongside/Banned but Not Silenced project.

Recent Events

From Courses to Curricula: Departmental Approaches to Relevant Writing Instruction. A talk by Pamela Flash promotional image

From Courses to Curricula: Departmental Approaches to Relevant Writing Instruction. A talk by Pamela Flash

Tuesday, August 15, 2023 11:30am to 12:30pm
Seamans Center

In this talk, Pamela Flash (University of Minnesota) describes what can happen when faculty colleagues within departments talk candidly about what they see (and hope to see) in student writing. Her work with scores of undergraduate departments reveals that conflicting conceptions of “writing,” coupled with a lack of awareness about where and how writing is being addressed within departmental curricula, can exhaust individual course instructors and impede students’ ability to develop as...

Institute for Teaching with Writing: New Frontiers in Teaching with Writing promotional image

Institute for Teaching with Writing: New Frontiers in Teaching with Writing

Tuesday, August 15, 2023 10:00am to 12:15pm
Seamans Center

This interactive, in-person workshop is designed for faculty and TAs interested in using writing to promote student learning. Topics include sharing the classroom with ChatGPT, creating assignments for a digital world, and cultivating a culture of teaching with writing within your department. Spaces limited. Register here.

This is the second of a series of two workshops on teaching with writing. The first workshop, More Writing, More Learning, Less Grading, takes place on Tuesday, Aug. 8 from...

Institute for Teaching with Writing: More Writing, More Learning, Less Grading promotional image

Institute for Teaching with Writing: More Writing, More Learning, Less Grading

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:00am to 12:15pm
Seamans Center

This interactive, in-person workshop is designed for faculty and TAs interested in using writing to promote student learning. Topics include using short writing assignments to promote learning, teaching writing structure through course readings, and helping students assess and revise their own writing. SPACES LIMITED. Register at writingcenter.uiowa.edu/institute-teaching-writing

This is the first of a series of two workshops on teaching with writing. The second workshop, New Frontiers in...

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Friday, June 9, 2023 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Students meet in discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics.

Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14. See writingcenter.uiowa.edu/graduate-student-programs for more details.

Please note that we have a limited number of spaces, so priority is given to students who are post-proposal, have mostly completed...

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Thursday, June 8, 2023 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Students meet in discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics.

Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14. See writingcenter.uiowa.edu/graduate-student-programs for more details.

Please note that we have a limited number of spaces, so priority is given to students who are post-proposal, have mostly completed...

Summer Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop (2023–24) promotional image

Summer Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop (2023–24)

Wednesday, June 7, 2023 5:00pm

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Books Ends—Obermann/OVPR 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 turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications for upcoming Book Ends workshops are due June 7, 2023 and Sept. 21, 2023.