Upcoming Events

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Wednesday, May 28, 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, May 29, 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

Friday, May 30, 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

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...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

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 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

Get It Done! Flow: Finding (And Keeping!) Joy in Academic Writing & Research promotional image

Get It Done! Flow: Finding (And Keeping!) Joy in Academic Writing & Research

Tuesday, October 16, 2018 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
Most of us have experienced inspiration and a sense of discovery in our research, moments that remind us, this is why I do it. Flow, however, can feel all too rare—crowded out by meetings, never-ending email, or the challenges we face when we sit down to write and think.  Amidst these intensities, finding (and keeping!) joy in our research might seem like a luxury. Yet in addition to potentially making our days more pleasant, cultivating pleasure in our research can enhance its rigor...
Exploring Women in Sports and Title IX's Legacy—An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Exploring Women in Sports and Title IX's Legacy—An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Our first Obermann Conversation of the semester features Diane Williams (M.S., M.A.Ed., and doctoral candidate in American Studies and GWSS) and Megan Oesting, head coach of the Eastern Iowa Swim Federation and the Eastern Iowa Swim School. Diane and Megan, both lifelong athletes and coaches, will provide a primer on Title IX, why it was created and how it’s been used (or not used) since its inception; review the experiences of female coaches; and discuss how having a female coach affects...
What Happens When Robots Write? - A talk by Bill Hart-Davidson promotional image

What Happens When Robots Write? - A talk by Bill Hart-Davidson

Monday, September 24, 2018 4:00pm to 5:30pm
English-Philosophy Building
Did a robot write this blurb? How might we know? And most importantly, can we live, together, with robots who write? In this talk, Bill Hart-Davidson, Associate Professor and Senior Researcher in the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center and Associate Dean for Graduate Education at Michigan State University, will address that last question to those of us who make our living by reading and writing, and teaching others to read, write and speak well, ethically, with grace and creativity...
2019 Graduate Institute on Engagement & the Academy Info Session promotional image

2019 Graduate Institute on Engagement & the Academy Info Session

Friday, September 14, 2018 9:00am to 10:00am
111 Church Street
Learn about the Graduate Institute and ask questions of a former graduate fellow. Obermann Center Assistant Director Jennifer New will lead the session. If you are interested in applying for the January 2019 Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy, please attend! Free and open to all.
Visioning and Calendars: Project Management Basics—A Get It Done Workshop promotional image

Visioning and Calendars: Project Management Basics—A Get It Done Workshop

Tuesday, September 11, 2018 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
You have an idea for a project or an event, but is it a good one? That is, is it good enough to be worth the time, expense, and effort that will go into it? Once you land on a project idea, how do you bring it to fruition? In this lunchtime workshop, we’ll work on project visioning, which can be helpful in fine tuning an existing project as well as identifying a new one. We’ll also try our hands at backwards calendaring. You’ll leave with a roadmap for completing your project. This workshop...
Digital Bridges Symposium - FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC promotional image

Digital Bridges Symposium - FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Wednesday, August 8 to Friday, August 10, 2018 (all day)
MERGE
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC With generous support from our institutions and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership has been a fascinating, rewarding, and instructive experience in collaboration, digital pedagogy, and digital humanities practice. Our August 8-10 Digital Bridges Symposium will bring together faculty, staff, and students from both institutions and digital scholars from across the country as we...