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...

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News

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...

Healing the Academy: HuMetricsHSS trains scholars, administration in values-based metrics

“Sacrifice?” “Out!” shouts someone at a table to vehement nods. “Generosity?” “In!” another table cheerfully declares. Humane metrics In ways we couldn’t have anticipated, a workshop collaboratively hosted earlier this year by the Obermann Center, the Vice President for Research, International Programs, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was valuable preparation for a campus engaging in...

Recent Events

Black Curators' Roundtable promotional image

Black Curators' Roundtable

Monday, October 28, 2019 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

This event marks the end of the exhibition Anonymous Donor, guest-curated by Anaïs Duplan and shown at the Figge Art Museum as a part of the Stanley Museum of Art collections-sharing program, Legacies for Iowa, sponsored by the Matthew Bucksbaum Family. Join Duplan and curators Gia Hamilton, Eileen Isagon Skyers, and Gee Wesley in a moderated conversation about their practice working in multiple exhibit, artistic, and community contexts.

Black Curators' Roundtable is organized by the Center for...

Latina/o/x Migration (Sawyer Seminar Symposium) promotional image

Latina/o/x Migration (Sawyer Seminar Symposium)

Friday, October 25, 2019 (all day)
MERGE

In this one-day symposium -- part of our yearlong Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar on “Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging” -- three invited speakers will explore questions related to migration and national belonging. Each speaker will deliver a plenary address, which will be followed by Q&A.

Speakers include the following: Karma Chávez is Associate Professor and Chair of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a rhetorical...

The Burden of Gun Violence: Trends and Policy Solutions promotional image

The Burden of Gun Violence: Trends and Policy Solutions

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 7:00pm to 9:00pm

This event brings together a panel of experts to discuss the burden of American gun violence and the potential for evidenced-based public policy solutions.

The PPC’s Crime & Justice Policy research program, directed by Mark Berg, is hosting this panel as part of the Run Up to the 2020 Caucus – a series designed to examine different policy topics that will be discussed during the campaign.

Topics will include:

Lethal and non-lethal gun violence trends in the United States Gender and gun...
Conversation: A Vital Tool for Mending Our Democracy promotional image

Conversation: A Vital Tool for Mending Our Democracy

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Many of us long for complex conversations with a greater range of people, and yet we aren't entirely sure how to access such conversations. In this Obermann Conversation, we convene three people -- Lore Baur, Ben Hassman, and Sherry Watt -- who actively organize and facilitate conversations that might be perceived as difficult. Each of them will share some of the skills involved in holding a mutually respectful and beneficial conversation, as well as some of the power that this relatively simple...

Latino/a/x Identity, Popular Culture, & Arts Education: A Visit From Poet José Olivarez promotional image

Latino/a/x Identity, Popular Culture, & Arts Education: A Visit From Poet José Olivarez

Tuesday, October 22, 2019 (all day)

Poetry Workshop with José Olivarez
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
12:30-1:30pm
UCC 2750
Lunch will be provided | Limited to first 20 registered UIowa students
Sign-up by October 12 at tinyurl.com/JOlivarez

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Poetry Reading with José Olivarez
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
6pm
Latino Native American Cultural Center

More information on acclaimed-poet and author of Citizen Illegal (2018) at:

www...

Media Clown: The Analog Clown Enters Digital Space promotional image

Media Clown: The Analog Clown Enters Digital Space

Monday, October 14, 2019 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Paul Kalina (Theatre Arts, CLAS) and Daniel Fine (Digital Arts Cluster) share their project "Media Clown," which premiered in June at the Prague Quadrennial. The event is the largest festival of stage and theatrical design in the world. The project includes two motion-capture suits and a holographic effect screen, all of which aid in Kalina's clown character (think Keaton, not Bozo) "entering" an iPad and becoming part of the digital world.

The two began planning the project during a Summer...