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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News

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Pandemic, State & Society Highlights Voices from Asia

Last winter, as news about a new virus that was first reported in China in December began to dominate headlines, two University of Iowa faculty members began discussing the cultural repercussions and historical echoes of what was happening. Shuang Chen, a professor of history who studies late imperial and modern China, reached out to Cynthia Chou, director of the UI’s Center for Asian and Pacific...

Uneasy Stories: Mary Lou Emery Explores the Paradoxical Cultural History of the Bungalow

The bungalow has long seemed an ideal home. It's moderate in scale, built with deep porches or verandas that both invite time outdoors and seem to welcome neighborly visits. Even the word “bungalow” conjures up such coziness that a trendy house-sharing app borrowed it for its name. In 20th-century literature and film, however, the bungalow is frequently the site of scandal and violence, which...

HPG Summer 2020 Internship Program: Final Report

In June and July, 2020, nine University of Iowa (UUI) graduate students from the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Education worked with six public-facing organizations as interns. It was the second summer of the Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internship program, which is one part of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded grant program administered by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

Mini Grants to Bring Virtual Guest Speakers to Your Class

APPLICATION Are you teaching an undergraduate or graduate course that features work by a colleague outside the University of Iowa? Do you have a colleague from another discipline who could bring a thought-provoking cross-disciplinary perspective to an issue you’re addressing in your course? Or would you like to invite a practitioner or an expert from the public sector whose perspective would...
Laura Perry with dog

Laura Perry Joins Obermann

Laura Perry is joining the Obermann Center staff for the next two years as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow with the Humanities for the Public Good project. Born in Southern California, Laura recently received her doctoral degree in Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin­-Madison. In addition to serving as the managing editor of the digital magazine Edge Effects, she was a project assistant...

Humanities Without Walls Consortium Awarded Mellon Grant Renewal

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been awarded a $5 million grant renewal from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its Humanities Without Walls (HWW) initiative at the Humanities Research Institute (HRI). Now a 16-member consortium of universities, including the University of Iowa, HWW fosters collaborative research and explores the contributions of humanities in the workplace...

Recent Events

Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures — Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures — Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Thursday, September 21 to Saturday, September 23, 2023 (all day)

How can the history of activism in sports help us understand the dynamics shaping conflicts today? How might labor relations in sport be imagined differently? How does the structure of sporting entertainment provide opportunities and obstacles to activism, and how can activists navigate these challenges?

As fans flock to sports arenas to cheer for their favorite teams, these spaces are simultaneously important societal battlegrounds. From acts of political protest by players to legislative...

Black Online Culture, Blackfishing, and Digital Blackface and Welcoming Reception for Dr. André Brock, an Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor

Wednesday, September 20, 2023 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Please join us in welcoming Dr. André Brock with a receiption at the Iowa City Public Library the day before his talk on campus. There will be a talk by Dr. Brock at 6 p.m., followed by a reception at the Library at 7 p.m. Food & beverages will be provided: light appetizers, dessert, nonalcoholic beverages.

André L. Brock is  an associate professor at the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with an MA in English and Rhetoric from...

Creative Matters: Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw in Conversation with Elizabeth Oakes promotional image

Creative Matters: Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw in Conversation with Elizabeth Oakes

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Voxman Music Building

Join us in Voxman Recital Hall for an intimate and engaging conversation with the Grammy-award winning Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw, youngest-ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Elizabeth Oakes, professor of instruction in chamber music in the UI School of Music, will moderate the talk. The event is free and open to the public.

The members of the acclaimed Attacca Quartet—described by The New York Times as “exuberant, funky, and … exactingly nuanced”—are...

Creating Engaging Event Communications Plans — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop promotional image

Creating Engaging Event Communications Plans — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street

Are you planning academic events—symposiums, conferences, or public lectures—and don’t know where to start with your communications strategy? Where are the best places to publicize your event around the UI campus and Iowa City? What tools should you use? Join Lauren Cox (Assistant Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies) and Jenna Hammerich (Communications Specialist, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies) for an in-person Get It Done Workshop to learn about strategic communications for...

Humanities in Medicine: Dr. Liana Meffert promotional image

Humanities in Medicine: Dr. Liana Meffert

Monday, September 18, 2023 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Medical Education Research Facility

Reception will follow. Event is free and open to the public, but please register here. 

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Spring 2024) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Spring 2024)

Tuesday, September 12, 2023 5:00pm

Obermann Center Faculty Fellows (formerly Fellows-in-Residence) fully devote themselves to projects within an interdisciplinary community. The program supports artists, researchers, and scholars during periods when focus and feedback are crucial. The program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...