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

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...
Dominic Dongilli

Meet Dominic Dongilli: HPG's New Graduate Research Assistant

Introducing the 2020–21 Humanities for the Public Good Graduate Research Assistant Arriving at the University of Iowa in Fall 2018 to begin his graduate studies, Dominic Dongilli knew that he wanted to participate in his new community in multiple ways. It was not going to be only about the library and classes. With that intention in mind, he applied for the new Humanities for the Public Good...

Jua Kali: Brian Ekdale Mines Lessons from Kenya's Scrappy Gig Economy

Brian Ekdale, a filmmaker and media scholar, is pondering what Kenya’s robust gig economy has to teach us at this moment of global crisis. Jua kali describes the country's scrappy, entrepreneurial network of artisans, manual laborers, and tradespeople who fix things, make small-batch wares, and resell found or wholesale merchandise. The term has evolved to refer to a kind of work culture and ethos...
group of scholars looks at artwork

Working Group Directors Q&A

The Obermann Center's unique Working Groups program provides space, structure, and discretionary funding for participants from across the UI campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a moment when cross-disciplinary collaboration is crucial to address shifting domains of knowledge and a rapidly changing world. We've extended the application deadline for 2020-21 Working Groups to April 28, and...
HPG logo

Summer 2020 Humanities for the Public Good Interns Selected

The Humanities for the Public Good program welcomes its second cohort of summer interns. The interns, who earn $5,000 for their eight weeks in the field, will work with organizations in the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids corridor on specific projects that range from oral history recording and archiving to curriculum development. In addition to their time at the job site, interns will meet regularly as a...
three scholars in Obermann library

Doing History in Public: Alumni share their work beyond academe

On February 24, three University of Iowa History PhD alumni visited campus to share their current work beyond academe. All three are exemplary scholars who have earned national and campus recognition for their work. In addition to the acclaim they’ve received, what makes these alumni stand out is their work in the public sector: Karen Christianson, whose dissertation explored gender relations in a...

Recent Events

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta promotional image

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta

Friday, April 7, 2023 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) (she/her) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast Media...

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College promotional image

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College

Friday, April 7, 2023 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Biology Building East

Patricia (Patty) Brennan is interested in the morphological evolution of genital morphology in vertebrates and the mechanisms that drive genital diversification, sexual conflict in particular. She has a BSc in Marine Biology from her native Colombia, where she studied the cardiac physiology of marine mammals. She went on to work in the Galapagos Islands aboard a research vessel (R/V Odyssey). Brennan completed her PhD dissertation at Cornell University, where she studied the breeding biology and...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens

Wednesday, April 5 7:00pm to Saturday, April 22, 2023 9:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This three-week screening and discussion series celebrates the pioneering work of Black women filmmakers from the 1970s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the first-ever Black women’s film festival, the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, the series features rare and recently restored works from groundbreaking directors including Maya Angelou, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Kathleen Collins, Monica Freeman, and Zeinabu irene Davis, among others. The majority of the screenings...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Short Films by Maya Angelou, Cheryl Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Short Films by Maya Angelou, Cheryl Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 7:00pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Come to FilmScene for a literary-themed selection of short films by and about poets. The evening will include Maya Angelou's directorial debut, Cheryl Fabio's cinematic portrait of her mother, the poet/performer/musician Sarah Webster Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson's recent documentary about the Enikalley Coffeehouse, a key space for Black LGBTQ artmaking and activism in 1980s Washington, D.C. Cheryl Fabio and Michelle Parkerson will join us by Zoom for a post-screening conversation moderated by...

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price promotional image

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price

Saturday, April 1, 2023 4:30pm to 6:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Miryam Charles is a Haitian-Canadian director, producer and cinematographer living in Montreal. She has produced several short and feature films. Her films have been presented in various festivals in Quebec and internationally. Her first feature film This House was presented at the Berlinale, the AFI film festival this year and was also included in the TIFF Top 10...

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program promotional image

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program

Saturday, April 1, 2023 2:30pm to 4:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Janaína Oliveira is a curator and researcher who holds a doctorate in history and was a Fulbright scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University (USA). She is one of the founders of FICINE—Fórum Itinerante de Cinema Negro. Her research focuses on Black Brazilian and aphrodiasporic cinemas and also on African cinematographies. She has served as a...