Upcoming Events

Book Matters: Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch promotional image

Book Matters: Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch

Tuesday, February 25, 2025 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Prairie Lights Books
Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate recent works from Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal, faculty in the University of Iowa Department of Anthropology and the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program. After the reading, Elana Buch, associate professor of anthropology, will join G’sell and Khandelwal for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Light refreshments will follow.
Radical Hope: Cultural Workers and Community Leaders in Conversation promotional image

Radical Hope: Cultural Workers and Community Leaders in Conversation

Monday, March 3, 2025 6:25pm to 7:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Join Dr. Leigh Patel, Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor, for a panel discussion and conversation with Iowa cultural workers and community leaders. Dr. Patel is a Professor of Educational Foundation, Organizations and Policy at University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Patel's work focuses on the ways that formal education has consistently acted as one site of coloniality and oppression, and that education and studying is one of the strongest tools for liberation. Political education and...
A Conversation with Scholars At Risk promotional image

A Conversation with Scholars At Risk

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum
Join us for a public conversation for faculty, students and staff from across campus about the work of Scholars at Risk to protect and promote academic freedom worldwide. SAR staff representatives Clare Farne Robinson (Director of Advocacy Programs) and Adam Braver (Student Advocacy Seminar Coordinator and Author) will offer remarks on the current state of academic freedom globally, the evolving definition and implementation framework for academic freedom within international law and policy, and...
Writing for The Conversation: Graduate Students promotional image

Writing for The Conversation: Graduate Students

Thursday, March 6, 2025 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual
Join the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Graduate College for a virtual introduction to The Conversation US with Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Associate Vice President for Research.  The Conversation is an independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of academic experts for the public good. With a monthly readership of 20 million, The Conversation expertly shares a scholar’s expertise far beyond the borders of our state. Articles are geared toward the general...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat

Friday, March 14, 2025 5:00pm
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025! Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26)

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5:00pm
Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding ($500 per year for 3 years) 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 explore new work and to share their own research, to organize a symposium, and to develop grant proposals. This program allows participants from across the campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a...
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...

News

Mangum Elected VP of National Humanities Alliance

The Obermann Center is a member of several organizations that advocate for the value of research, including the National Humanities Alliance. The NHA draws members from universities; professional organizations like the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association; and cultural institutions. All were critical in securing renewed...

Healing Arts: Scholar Traces Journey of a 15th-Century Medical Book

Twice now, art historian Sarah Kyle has visited the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice to study the Roccabonella Herbal, a fifteenth-century illustrated book of plant medicines. Neither the text of the 900-page volume nor its more than 450 images are available digitally, and Kyle is interested in the interplay of the two. “Although the book is extremely fragile,” says the associate professor...

Full audio of Trudy Peterson's keynote lecture on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On March 1, 2018, Trudy H. Peterson delivered the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorship Keynote Lecture, “Best When Used By: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” as part of the 2018 Provost's Global Forum/Obermann Humanities Symposium, "Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice." Listen to the full audio below:

Archives as a Space for Social Justice Is Focus of Provost's Global Forum/Obermann Humanities Symposium

“It is essential to seize the power of archives and use it to hold institutional and government leaders accountable. All aspects of society should be documented, not simply those where power has traditionally resided.” —Randall Jimerson, “Archives for All: Professional Responsibility and Social Justice” Animating the Archives Archives conjure up visions of crumbling files tied with...

Two UI Students Selected as HWW Fellows

Two University of Iowa graduate students have been named as Humanities Without Walls consortium 2018 pre-doctoral workshop fellows. Lydia Maunz-Breese (English, CLAS) and Makayla Steiner (English, CLAS) will be among 30 students from the consortium who will participate in a three-week career diversity workshop in Chicago. Under the leadership of the Chicago Humanities Festival...

First Iowa City Archive Crawl Celebrates Treasures in Local Collections

Hold History in Your Hands at the First-Ever Iowa City Archives Crawl What gems hide in plain sight in Iowa City’s libraries, museums, and archives? At the area’s first-ever archives crawl, visitors can snoop in between the pages of historic diaries, read other people's mail, hold feathers and fossils, and peer into mysteries revealed by historic artifacts like swords and locks of...

Recent Events

Revising Injustice: Emphatically Anti-racist Comics promotional image

Revising Injustice: Emphatically Anti-racist Comics

Wednesday, October 12, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual
This event has been canceled.
Canceled
Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis promotional image

Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis

Thursday, September 29, 2022 4:00pm to 5:00pm
111 Church Street
The Obermann Center's 2022 Humanities Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition will take place on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (111 Church St.). It will be an in-person event, free and open to all. Please support our humanities graduate students and attend! This 3MT is specially designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The event challenges graduate students to articulate their complex research clearly and concisely...
Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium Info Session promotional image

Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium Info Session

Thursday, September 22, 2022 8:30am to 9:30am
Virtual
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is reimagining its longtime Humanities Symposium as an Arts & Humanities Symposium. We want to lighten the planning and organizational work for symposia directors so that they can focus on the inspiring work of connecting with one another, sharing scholarly and creative discoveries, and experimenting with creative, interactive approaches to artistic and humanistic research. We hope that streamlined planning will open space for imaginative cross...
The Impact of Schools on Mental Health: An Obermann Conversation promotional image

The Impact of Schools on Mental Health: An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, September 21, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual
Schools play a crucial role in young people's mental health, something that became extremely clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CDC, in 2021, 37% of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health, and 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year. Schools provide connectedness to mentors, friends, and services. At the same time, they can also be sites of difficulty in the form of bullying or stress from learning obstacles.  In this...

Seeding Excellence: OVPR Community Engaged Scholars Mini-Design Workshop

Friday, September 16, 2022 1:00pm to 3:00pm
111 Church Street
On Friday, Sept. 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Obermann Center (111 Church St.), the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of Community Engagement will hold a mini-design workshop for faculty members who plan to apply for a Seeding Excellence: OVPR Community Engaged Scholars grant. Free and open to all. Register here. About the Seeding Excellence Initiative – OVPR Community Engaged Scholars (AHSS) SEI, a two-year initiative, aims to sustain the continued growth of the campus...