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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027)

Friday, September 18, 2026 11:59pm
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2027 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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books 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 UI faculty members with significant research responsibilities turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500 honorarium for two external...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 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...

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

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...

News

participants in 1950s racial justice institute

Planning the UI College of Education Annual Summer Racial Justice Institute

In 1944, sociologist Charles S. Johnson launched the Fisk University Race Relations Institute (RRI), which ran until 1969. His goal was to identify the social, political, and economic policies and practices that limited opportunities for Blacks and other marginalized racial groups and contributed to racial unrest in the U.S. The RRI differed from the other estimated 400 organizations working to...

Heart Attack or Takotsubo Syndrome? An AI project seeks to differentiate

Chest pain, shortness of breath, and an irregular EKG are hallmarks of a heart attack. However, some people exhibiting these symptoms may actually be experiencing takotsubo syndrome (TTS), a weakening of the left ventricle. The majority of cases of TTS, which is more prevalent in women, are caused by acute stress, such as unexpected loss, serious illness, intense fear, or a violent interaction...
The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa, 2021-22

The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa

On April 29, 2022, the University of Iowa will welcome a remarkable new tree to the Pentacrest: a sapling propagated from the old chestnut tree that grew behind the Amsterdam annex where Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II. Although the tree died a number of years ago--at an estimated 170 years old--it lives on through saplings that have been planted in such as places as the Boston...
Tracie Morris

Black Spring: Tracie Morris asks, "How did we get to here and where do we go from here?"

As the culminating event in the Black Lives on Screen series that has spanned the spring semester, Tracie Morris (Iowa Writers' Workshop) is presenting a short filmic work with performance voice-over. Black Spring (in 5 parts) is cultural theory, cinema, poetry, protest art, and elegy. Like much of Morris's work, it is a hybrid that is not easily categorized. Resisting categories Morris is a poet...

Thinking in Images: The Evolution of Rachel Williams

“I had to think in images.” This is how Rachel Williams explains her progression as the artist-author of two graphic histories who moved from illustrating the words of others to bringing a story to life on her own terms. A painter and art educator by training, Williams’s approach has always been multi-disciplinary. For her recently published books, Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The...

Cathy Park Hong Gives UI Keynote

In the first chapter of Cathy Park Hong’s creative nonfiction book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World, 2020), the reader is transported to Kalamazoo, where Hong gave a reading from an early draft of her book at Western Michigan University. At the end of the event some fans approach her, eager to share gratitude for her work and express how personal it is to them. Two audience...

Recent Events

Dear Kitty: The Act of Keeping a Diary promotional image

Dear Kitty: The Act of Keeping a Diary

Wednesday, March 30, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

As we await the arrival of the Anne Frank Tree, which will be planted on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on April 29, 2022, we encourage people of all ages to read the book that is at the heart of this event. Better yet—read it in community!

To provide context to your reading, we’re offering three in-person discussions at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St., Iowa City). All of the discussions are free and open to the general public. 

In this second session, Dr. Kirsten Kumpf Baele...

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism

Tuesday, March 29, 2022 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Virtual

The Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research defines AR as “practice-based, practice-led research in the arts,” often an interdisciplinary creative research that acts as a “driver for critical thinking, creativity, and open innovation.” Many artists understand their art-making to be a means of asking soaring questions; of helping audiences grasp the complexity of wicked problems; of shocking, literally moving, or seducing participants into risking new solutions; on enacting the art of...

Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey promotional image

Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 3:00pm to 4:00pm
University of Iowa Pentacrest

Join us for a presentation from the Meskwaki Language Preservation Director Wayne Pushetonequa, "Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey."

Free and open to all. Reception to follow.

Co-sponsored by the Native American Student Association; the UI Old Capitol Museum; the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies; the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program; and Native American Council.

Amplifying Women's Voices: A Faculty & Guest Artist Recital Featuring the Lanta Horn Duo promotional image

Amplifying Women's Voices: A Faculty & Guest Artist Recital Featuring the Lanta Horn Duo

Thursday, March 10, 2022 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building

This concert will be livestreamed here: https://music.uiowa.edu/about/live-stream-concert-schedule

This recital is titled "Amplifying Women's Voices" and consists of music written by women, primarily in the late-20th and 21st centuries. Women are a significantly underrepresented group in the field of brass instrument performance. Some studies suggest reasons for this inequity stems from lack of role models, and others point to persistent stereotypes about women who play brass. Reports continue...

Humanities and Public Life in the Age of COVID promotional image

Humanities and Public Life in the Age of COVID

Thursday, March 10, 2022 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

How have engaged artists and scholars in the University of Iowa Press Humanities & Public Life Book Series responded pragmatically, pedagogically, and philosophically to the last two years?
 
The last few years have raised tough questions for publicly engaged artists and humanists. COVID shut down their projects, politics have divided communities, and protests against systemic racism have demanded that engaged scholars re-examine how they work with public partners and with students. As one way...

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT II) promotional image

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT II)

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

The University of Iowa Pentacrest Museums explores current exhibition Let Me Be Myself: The Life Story of Anne Frank through the Exhibition Spotlight program series in a special two-part virtual panel event. Pentacrest Museums Director of Education & Engagement, Carolina Kaufman will moderate discussion with panelists on a variety of related topics to share the story and legacy of Anne Frank and her impact on society. These sessions will illuminate how Frank's story has inspired new approaches...