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.

View more events

Spacer

News

HWW logo

Apply for the Summer '23 Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Workshop

Launched in 2015 as an initiative of the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium, this annual workshop welcomes 30 participants each summer from higher education institutions across the United States. HWW Summer Workshop Fellows work in a variety of academic disciplines. They are scholars and practitioners who bring experience in community building, museum curation, filmmaking, radio programming, social media, project management, research, writing, and teaching....
Sharon Yam and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz

A Project Postponed: Scholars Take Interdisciplinary Grant Project on the Road

When the pandemic postponed Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and GWSS, University of Iowa) and Shui-yin Sharon Yam's (Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, University of Kentucky) Obermann residency for their Interdisciplinary Research Grant project last summer, they decided to postpone their work until they could meet in person. Though the Center remained closed to faculty this...
John Rapson sitting at the piano

John Rapson: Looking Back at a Generous Collaborator

In the summer of 2014, it wasn't uncommon to find two faculty members padding around the Obermann Center in bare feet as they dashed from their upstairs offices to the downstairs library to watch movies. While it appeared to be a scholarly form of summer camp, John Rapson (School of Music) and Paul Kalina (Theatre) were deep in research as they broke down how music and movement interacted in old...
Virtual Reality Screenshot

Using Virtual Reality to Train Math Teachers

Most children in the U.S. struggle to learn mathematics, with 50 to 75% of students scoring below proficient on achievement tests in grades 4 through 12. Children with disabilities such as autism tend to fare even worse. Clearly, math teachers must be equipped to educate students who require varying levels of support—but, for the most part, they aren’t. Logistical issues inherent in conventional...
Dominic Dongilli at his internship

Summer Interns at the Halfway Mark: A growing tomato, a gift from Brokaw, and nudity in the archives

It is around the halfway point of so many projects when the work is most difficult. The newness has worn off; the end is still out of reach, but close enough to give us an uneasy reminder of how much is yet to be completed. This is the experience of the ten UI graduate students who are at the midway point of their Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internships. For eight weeks, they are working...
Teachers and children in classroom

A Thousand Prospects for Research: A Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar Reflects

In late summer 2020, a new community initiative was formed in response to the impact of the pandemic on K12 students: Neighborhood NESTS. The Obermann Center responded by creating a new graduate research position, the Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar, to work with the initiative, providing program management and deepening the project through disciplinary research. In this article...

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.