Upcoming Events
Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat
Monday, May 12 to Friday, May 16, 2025 (all day)
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025!
Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium
Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
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, 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 problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium
Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
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, 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 problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines
Upcoming Application Deadlines
News
Pandemic Practices: Lessons Learned (and Worth Keeping)
Even as many of us long for a return to an in-person, on-site work life, we’ve also been learning valuable new practices—for teaching, for meetings, for collaboration, and more. Over the past few months, the Obermann Center has been collecting Pandemic Practices to share, practices we want to remember and refine. The following is a list of practices submitted via our webform and/or discussed at...
Spring 2021 Invite-a-Guest-to-Class Mini-Grant Recipients, Visitors
We received such enthusiastic reports from our Fall 2020 Invite-a-Guest-to-Class mini-grant recipients that we reprised the program this spring, extending eligibility to UI teaching assistants as well as faculty. We're delighted to award a new slate of mini-grants to support 38 virtual course visits by a diverse and impressive array of educators, researchers, artists, administrators, and activists...
Wise and Valiant: Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez celebrates forgotten women authors
While completing a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, Martín López-Vega took a course on the Golden age of Spanish theater. When the class read Valor, agravio y mujer by Ana Caro, López-Vega was shocked. Though he was a native of Spain and had studied literature at the University of Spain, he’d never before heard of Caro. The course, which led him to discover the names and...
Patent Warrior: Jason Rantanen's projects seek to help patents serve people
Early last fall, the Federal Circuit rejected a request from Google to move a patent infringement case involving Google’s YouTube service out of East Texas. The request, formally known as a writ of mandamus, is an attempt at judicial remedy by petitioning an appellate court. In this instance, Google was claiming that East Texas wasn’t the proper venue for the lawsuit. There has been an uptick in...
Black Lives on Screen: Cinematic Arts Offers Semester-Long Series
This spring semester, the Department of Cinematic Arts is hosting an online screening series, Black Lives on Screen, featuring the work of a diverse range of acclaimed African American and Black filmmakers, artists, and scholars. Intended to promote and celebrate the rich history and future of Black cinematic expression, the events will give UI classes, as well as individual students, staff, and...
Cultural Postmortem 2020
How can artists and scholars help the nation contend with the peril in which we find ourselves—starting with our own campuses? The 2020 US presidential race was one of the most politically and ideologically divisive and contentious races that we’ve ever seen. As the events of January 6, 2021 have illustrated, the nation remains divided: political leaders at the highest level are challenging...
