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

Teresa Mangum
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
“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

Jennifer New
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...
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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...
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Recent Events

Stars and Stones promotional image

Stars and Stones

Thursday, May 5, 2022 9:00pm
Theatre Building

Iowa New Play Festival 2022 Production

Stars and Stones
By Emma Silverman
Directed by Sarah Gazdowicz
Thursday, May 5 at 5:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Alan MacVey Theatre, UI Theatre Building

A young Jewish woman reckons with the ghosts of her past and the apparitions of the present during and after a research trip to Poland. As she is launched back and forth through history, she is forced to consider the nature of her project while a scattering of strangers embark on their own moralistic...

Stars and Stones promotional image

Stars and Stones

Thursday, May 5, 2022 5:30pm
Theatre Building

Iowa New Play Festival 2022 Production

Stars and Stones
By Emma Silverman
Directed by Sarah Gazdowicz
Thursday, May 5 at 5:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Alan MacVey Theatre, UI Theatre Building

A young Jewish woman reckons with the ghosts of her past and the apparitions of the present during and after a research trip to Poland. As she is launched back and forth through history, she is forced to consider the nature of her project while a scattering of strangers embark on their own moralistic...

Application Deadline: Summer 2022 Humanities Without Walls Seed Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Summer 2022 Humanities Without Walls Seed Grants

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 5:00pm

In collaboration with the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls (HWW) project led by the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Obermann Center is offering summer 2022 Seed Grants to support the development of applications for the final HWW Grand Research Challenge. The Obermann Seed Grants provide up to $10,000 for faculty-led teams to develop proposals this summer which they will then submit to HWW, for a grant of up to $150,000 for...

Young Writers Respond promotional image

Young Writers Respond

Friday, April 29, 2022 7:30pm to 8:30pm
Phillips Hall

This year, the Iowa Youth Writing Project, IC Speaks, and the UI Center for Human Rights have asked students to respond to the legacy of Anne Frank via various prompts—reflecting on Anne's experience as a hidden person and her message about social justice. In this event, writers from junior high age through undergraduates will share their entries. We'll hear from local voices, as well as from young people around the world who participated in these calls.

This event follows the Anne Frank Tree...

Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony promotional image

Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony

Friday, April 29, 2022 5:00pm
Macbride Hall

On April 29, 2022, a new tree will be planted on the University of Iowa’s Pentacrest—a sapling propagated from the immense horse chestnut tree that grew in the courtyard behind the annex where Anne Frank and her family hid for 761 days during World War II. This living symbol of Anne’s spirit and humanitarian message is the 13th Anne Frank Sapling to be planted in the United States.

This event is free and open to the public.

NOTICE: Because of weather, the 4/29 tree planting ceremony has been...

Amal Kassir Writing Workshop: Using Writing as a Tool for Healing promotional image

Amal Kassir Writing Workshop: Using Writing as a Tool for Healing

Friday, April 29, 2022 1:00pm to 2:30pm
North Hall

FREE – SPACE LIMITED TO 12 STUDENTS

SIGN UP: https://bit.ly/AmalWorkshop

Poet Amal Kassir will be taking part in the Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony on the UI Pentacrest at 5:00 pm on April 29. Prior to the ceremony, she has offered to lead a writing workshop for students in the School of Social Work.

Join Amal in a brave space, where we will be exploring our own stories for healing that may go beyond us, from within and back! Amal believes we have the capacity to control our narrative...