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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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

Jennifer New
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

Jennifer New
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

Jenna Hammerich
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

Jennifer New
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...
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Recent Events

Application deadline: Summer 2022 HPG Internships promotional image

Application deadline: Summer 2022 HPG Internships

Monday, February 21, 2022 5:00pm

Experiential learning is a cornerstone of the Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good program. Nine internships are available for summer 2022 for UI PhD students in the humanities or humanities-adjacent disciplines. Interns will spend two summer months working with and for a campus or community partner on a specific project or area of focus. In addition to their work on site, interns also attend weekly cohort meetings and complete assignments that provide professionalizing skills and...

Ukraine and Russia: Deciphering the Current Situation — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Ukraine and Russia: Deciphering the Current Situation — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, February 16, 2022 5:00pm to 6:00pm
Virtual

As the news cycle continues to focus on tensions at the Ukraine-Russia border, we've reached out to three people who know the region well to help us better understand current events and what has led to this situation. In this pop-up Obermann Conversation, we'll hear from:

Daria Kuznetsova — A PhD student in Political Science and a native of Ukraine, Kuznetsova studies democratic transitions and the survival of democracies. For her Masters in Community and Regional Planning from ISU, she focused...

Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure promotional image

Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure

Friday, February 11, 2022 3:00pm to 4:15pm
Virtual

Join us for a virtual book talk from Hatim El-Hibri, author of Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure.

El-Hibri is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University. His research focuses on global and transnational media studies, visual culture studies, Lebanon and the Middle East, urban studies, television studies, and media theory and history.

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT I) promotional image

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT I)

Wednesday, February 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...

What Do We Mean by Research Now? — Collaborative Approaches to Understanding Memory and Minds promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now? — Collaborative Approaches to Understanding Memory and Minds

Monday, February 7, 2022 11:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

How do scientists gather and sustain teams to understand infinitely complex mysteries—in this case, memory and the mind? And how are our departments, colleges, and disciplinary organizations adapting to the need for such deeply interdisciplinary teams? Join us on February 7, 2022, as a group of researchers from neuroscience, microbiology, and internal medicine share their process, challenges, and suggestions for the future of research.

Panelists:

Ted Abel, Professor, Chair, and DEO of...

Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Summer Internship Info Session promotional image

Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Summer Internship Info Session

Friday, February 4, 2022 9:00am to 10:00am
Virtual

Join Associate Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Jennifer New, to learn more about Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Summer 2022 internship opportunities. Internships are open to UI graduate students pursuing doctoral degrees.

Learn more about the available internships at https://uihumanitiesforthepublicgood.com/summer-2022-internships/.

The info session is free and open to all: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/91762226223. 

Practice-based, cross-disciplinary opportunities for...