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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, May 31, 2029 (all day)
111 Church Street

Books 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 turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

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News

Bella Spilotro

Behind the Zines: Learning from Artists at Public Space One

Bella Spilotro
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.
Gregg Johnson standing outside of the public library

Iowa Library Advocacy: An American Consultant’s Case Study

Gregg Johnson
This summer I've had the privilege of working with the Development Director of the Iowa City Public Library Friends Foundation (ICPLFF), Katie Roche. As a Government Affairs and Advocacy Intern, I've relished the opportunity the Obermann Center granted to expand my professional horizons beyond academia and to translate that experience directly into future industry opportunities.
photos scattered across a desk

Connecting to Community Through the Archives

Johanna Tesfaye
Working with an archive allows us to situate ourselves within a place’s history and connect with the community it has represented over time. This is central to my own filmmaking process, a way of imagining with the narratives of an archive. A creative practice that began with materials from my personal archive (years of iPhone photos and videos, notes, sound recordings) has since developed into deliberate collaborations with people, places, and spaces.
students writing by hand and at computers

UI launches pilot to expand writing across disciplines

The University of Iowa is building on its longstanding excellence in teaching writing and communication with the launch of a new Writing Enriched Curriculum (WEC) pilot program this fall. The program represents an important step toward integrating writing and communication into every discipline and developing a model that can strengthen student outcomes across the university. The pilot program is a collaboration between the Obermann Teaching with Writing Working Group, the Office of Writing and Communication, the Writing Center, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, with additional support from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Center for Teaching, and the Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology.
Laptop with Zoom open

Community, Assessment, and the Work of Showing Up

Olivia Alsup
This summer, I am working as the Community Feedback Framework Intern for the Iowa City Public Library Friends Foundation. In this position, I'm working on examining current best practices for how libraries can engage intentionally and effectively with the communities they serve. My final project for the internship will be putting together a report that will help guide the library through its community assessment process and help inform future library services, spaces, and programs. Day to day, I interview other nonprofit and community leaders who have recently facilitated their own community and program assessments.
The Community surrounding the Towncrest Center while their street sign is being installed.

Where Money Meets the People: What Academics Can Do for Their Community

Aaron Stagner
Five years ago, I was sitting at a desk a lot like the one I’m sitting at now, doing similar things. In 2021, I taught ESL and adult continuing education classes in Houston, Texas. Teaching both new and established residents made it clear that anybody, from anywhere, could make Houston their home. Working closely with my community, I discovered one of the most important requirements for my students to establish themselves successfully: literacy. Both in language and technology, literacy allowed my students to thrive, get jobs, and build a community.
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Recent Events

Pride Week: Trans Day of Visibility promotional image

Pride Week: Trans Day of Visibility

Friday, March 31, 2023 12:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Join us in the Pride Lounge (Iowa Memorial Union Room 209) from noon to 5 p.m. to spend time with community, honoring this important day. Follow our Instagram (@uiowapridehouse) for further TDOV engagement!

Frequências: Interventions by Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Michael B. Gillespie, and Cris Lira promotional image

Frequências: Interventions by Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Michael B. Gillespie, and Cris Lira

Friday, March 31, 2023 10:30am to 11:45am
Stanley Museum of Art

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

Tatiana Carvalho Costa is a curator and teacher. She is a doctoral student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais where she researches Afro-Brazilian epistemologies and Black Brazilian Cinema, in particular the recent production of short films. She works as programmer and juror of festivals and recently joined the curatorial team of the Mostra de Cinema de...

Crosscurrents in Time: A Video Trilogy by Aline Motta (Exhibition) promotional image

Crosscurrents in Time: A Video Trilogy by Aline Motta (Exhibition)

Friday, March 31, 10:00am to Monday, July 31, 2023 4:30pm
Stanley Museum of Art

This multi-channel installation of three related videos will be on view in the Lauridsen Family Gallery at the Stanley Museum of Art. Aline Motta is a participant in Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora, an Oberman Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Project Award, held at the University of Iowa March 30 - April 1, 2023.

Among the Atlantic waters that connect Brazil, Portugal, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, contemporary artist Aline Motta engages with...

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

Friday, March 31 to 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...

Verdi's Falstaff and Shakespeare's: An introduction to the Metropolitan Opera performance. Lecture by Miriam Gilbert promotional image

Verdi's Falstaff and Shakespeare's: An introduction to the Metropolitan Opera performance. Lecture by Miriam Gilbert

Thursday, March 30, 2023 5:30pm to 6:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Prof. Miriam Gilbert will explore the relationship between Verdi's opera and its Shakespearean sources.

Free and open to the public. The talk will also be available on zoom: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/9153651333

Sponsored by the Opera Studies Forum and the Obermann Center.

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Screenings of República and Dazed Flesh promotional image

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Screenings of República and Dazed Flesh

Thursday, March 30, 2023 4:15pm to 5:45pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

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

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora brings together filmmakers, artists, scholars, and critics from across the globe in order to inaugurate a practice of collective attunement. How can we best attune ourselves to the waves set in motion by this new cinema? How does Brazil’s current...