Upcoming Events

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Monday, June 2, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Thursday, June 5, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025 promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025

Friday, May 23, 2025 5:00pm
Virtual
This program offers companionship and accountability to University of Iowa artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of academic writing project (ex. academic articles/essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, nonfiction) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.In Summer 2025, two write-on-site groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St...
Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 5:00pm
Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book 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 in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three...
Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026)

Wednesday, October 8, 2025 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 International Fellowships (Spring 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026)

Friday, October 24, 2025 11:59pm
111 Church Street
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2026 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...

News

A Clown Walks Into the Matrix...

Or how one group is searching for the holy grail of live entertainment Paul Kalina is wearing a suit that has three kinds of technology embedded in it. He is a clown who has performed bedside for kids in hospitals and on the barest of stages. But in June 2019 he is in Prague for the world’s largest festival of theater and stage design, the PQ—or Prague Quadrennial. He is going on stage...

Why You – Yes, YOU Who Is Only Partway into a Dissertation and Who Doesn’t Have Time – Need to Do the Humanities 3MT!

There was one humanities finalist in last year’s University of Iowa 3MT competition--Miriam Janechek. She was in the midst of writing her English literature dissertation about 19th-century Victorian children’s literature and religion, while simultaneously caring for a baby and a toddler and living in St. Paul, MN. It would have been easy for her to view the competition, in which participants...

Executive Directors of MLA, AHA to Participate in Humanities Career Diversity Symposium

On September 13 and 14, 2019, Paula Krebs and Jim Grossman—executive directors of the Modern Language Association and American Historical Association, respectively—will join other national leaders of engaged graduate education for a UI-led symposium on public scholarship, experiential learning, and humanities graduate education. University of Iowa PhD students who participated in this summer's...

Relying on the Unreliable: Historian Catherine Stewart Examines 1930s Domestic Workers

Obermann Fellow-in-Residence Catherine Stewart’s current book project, The New Maid, relies in part on a highly unreliable source—student essays. Specifically, Stewart is interested in what is divulged through a cache of papers written by students at a private women’s college in the South in response to the topic, “Negro servants in my household.” Written between 1928 and 1940, the nearly 100...
Ashley Cheyemi McNeil

Ashley Cheyemi McNeil Appointed 2019-21 HPG Postdoctoral Scholar

Interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Ashley Cheyemi Rae McNeil has been appointed the 2019–2021 Postdoctoral Scholar for the Andrew W. Mellon–Funded Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) initiative. McNeil earned her bi-national PhD in English from Georgia State University and in American Studies from the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. As...

Misfitting: Symposium Connects Disabilities Studies Scholars, Shines Light on Need for Scholarly Leadership at UI

Tricia Zebrowski and Douglas Baynton pulled off a wonderful finale this spring. The two retiring professors—Zebrowski is in her first year as an Emeritus in Communication Sciences & Disorders, while Baynton retired in May 2019 from History—co-directed “Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered,” the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium. During three days in April, the pair helped to host eminent...

Recent Events

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference promotional image

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference

Friday, April 4 12:00pm to Saturday, April 5, 2025 5:00pm
Schaeffer Hall
Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories promotional image

Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories

Friday, April 4, 2025 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual
Discover how Anne Frank’s story continues to shape conversations on empathy, education, and human rights in a compelling webinar featuring scholars from across the U.S. Join the University  of Iowa (UI) Anne Frank Initiative, an International Programs affinity group, on Friday, April 4, 2025, at 10 a.m. (CDT) as they host an insightful and engaging webinar featuring several esteemed authors from the groundbreaking book, Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories (Routledge, 2025). Hear...
The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore promotional image

The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore

Thursday, April 3, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Come to Prairie Lights Books for a special Darwin Day reading by Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic. Published in 2023 by local publisher Ice Cube Press and named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress, The Swine Republic provides extensive research and reportage on the truth behind Iowa's infamously poor water quality, which you "...won't get ... from Iowa’s agricultural and political leaders." (icecubepress.com) Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature...
Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom promotional image

Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom

Thursday, April 3, 2025 4:00pm
Jefferson Building
a Faculty First Responders Workshop sponsored by POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry At a time when academics are finding their work hyper-surveilled, banned from funding, or even scrubbed by AI, how can we vibrantly sustain our research, writing, and creative practice? In this Faculty First Responders workshop, participants will learn concrete steps to support freedom of inquiry for themselves and others. Topics include digital security measures, reducing risk of extremist attacks...
“The Unfinished Symphony”: Graduate and Professional Student Research and Connection Lab  promotional image

“The Unfinished Symphony”: Graduate and Professional Student Research and Connection Lab 

Friday, March 28, 2025 10:30am to 2:30pm
University Capitol Centre
All are welcome to attend this informal symposium designed for graduate and professional students who are in the beginning or the middle of their research to share what they've got to a group of people who are not necessarily well-versed in their discipline. We encourage you to come and talk about your works still in progress, your experiments that are under construction, and where you think all of that might lead (no conclusive data necessary). This is an opportunity to practice sharing your...
Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Thursday, March 27 to Friday, March 28, 2025 (all day)
As calls for transnational solidarity among reproductive justice movements emerge, communities are asking how reproductive liberation is tethered to various social movements. Directed by Lina-Maria Murillo (Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies and History) and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies), this symposium brings together scholars and artists with local, regional, and global perspectives to bear on the pursuit of reproductive justice as we...