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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Surveying the Effects of Political Corruption

Americans may feel they are living in an era of unprecedented political corruption. Just weeks ago, President Trump pardoned eleven people, many of whose convictions included bribery, tax fraud, and the sale of a public office. In the whirl of daily headlines, it can be easy to forget that corruption is nearly as old as democracy itself, with the ancient Greeks and Romans providing many examples...

UI grad student takes home first place for humanities-based Three Minute Thesis competition

UI graduate student Christie Vogler wins the Obermann Center’s first humanities-based Three-Minute Thesis competition with her research on gender archeology, which uncovers the unknown roles of women in Ancient Rome. Read the full article at The Daily Iowan's website: https://dailyiowan.com/2020/02/10/university-of-iowa-grad-student-takes-home-first-place-for-humanities-based-three-minute-thesis...
What Can Museums Become? logo

Activating the Museum

March Humanities Symposium to Explore Future of Museums When you think about museums, what comes to mind? Many of us picture an imposing building with artworks and artifacts displayed among velvet ropes, marble columns, and guards who shush you. But there are many possibilities for museums, and the two directors of this spring’s Obermann Humanities Symposium, “What Can Museums Become?”, Joyce Tsai...
Imagining Latinidades podcast logo

Imagining Latinidades Offers Full Slate This Spring

The second half of the year-long Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar Imagining Latinidades welcomes a full slate of speakers to campus this spring. After hosting an opening conference and two short symposia in the fall, in addition to commencing a podcast, the Seminar’s directors—Darrel Wanzer-Serrano (Latina/o Studies and Communication Studies), Rene Rocha (Political Science and Latina/o Studies)...
Jean Gordon

Lost Language Found: Gordon Develops Tool to Improve Aphasia Diagnosis

How would you feel if, in the middle of a conversation, you couldn’t come up with the word for water, shirt, or table—or your own name? If suddenly it was a struggle to comment on a movie or tell a simple story? You’d likely feel confused, embarrassed, frustrated, scared. According to the National Aphasia Association, over two million Americans suffer from aphasia—the inability to speak, write...

It All Depends on 31 Syllables: A Study of the Power of Japan's Medieval Waka

Imagine if your social stature and your livelihood were dependent on your ability to write poetry and refer to the work of other poets. If there were poetry competitions among the elite that decided one’s worthiness. Or if the entire direction of a nation could be changed via 31 syllables. Japanese waka, a 31-syllable precursor to haiku, held just this kind of sway for several centuries...

Recent Events

Public Forum for Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Director Candidate: Naomi Greyser

Friday, February 23, 2024 2:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Naomi Greyser, associate professor of American Studies, English and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, will deliver a presentation and participate in a Q&A as a candidate for the Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (OCAS). 

Greyser serves as executive director of POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry. In her research, teaching and service, Greyser engages the process of knowledge creation, with an eye towards making space for messiness and unpredictability. Her first...

Book Matters: Margot Livesey in conversation with Lan Samantha Chang at Prairie Lights promotional image

Book Matters: Margot Livesey in conversation with Lan Samantha Chang at Prairie Lights

Monday, February 19, 2024 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Prairie Lights Books

Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate Margot Livesey’s new novel, The Road from Belhaven. Livesey is professor of fiction in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of 10 other books. After the reading, Lan Samantha Chang, Writers’ Workshop program director and Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts, will join Livesey for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Appetizers and wine will be available.

              Monday, Feb. 19, 2024
      ...

Imagining Community in 2030: An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Imagining Community in 2030: An Obermann Conversation

Monday, February 19, 2024 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

What will our community be like in 2030? How are local nonprofits shaping the Iowa City area, and what are their visions for the future? How can we break down the silos of “city” and “neighborhood” to create a better and more unified place for everyone? In this Obermann Conversation, UI faculty and local nonprofit leaders will discuss how we can harness the collective impact model to create a more equitable community. The collective impact model is a community-building strategy involving a...

Application Deadline: What She Said — A Workshop on Empowering Women’s Voices promotional image

Application Deadline: What She Said — A Workshop on Empowering Women’s Voices

Friday, February 16, 2024 5:00pm

Our voices are an important indicator of who we are. Female-presenting speakers often learn self-undermining speaking habits from the people and society around them. How does the voice contribute to our sense of presence and how others perceive us? Tone, inflection, pace, and volume are some of the vocal elements that provide clues for the listener as to what we think and feel.

In this workshop, UI Theatre Arts professor Mary Mayo will invite you to develop a greater awareness of your voice and...

Beyond Speech and Representation: Insights from Child Psychotherapy about the Materiality of Learning promotional image

Beyond Speech and Representation: Insights from Child Psychotherapy about the Materiality of Learning

Friday, February 16, 2024 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Seamans Center

Dr. Gail Boldt is a former University of Iowa faculty member and is now a distinguished professor of education at Penn State. She teaches graduate seminars in cultural and critical theory as it relates to contemporary issues in education. At the undergraduate level, she works in elementary and early childhood program literacy education. Dr. Boldt is the Senior Editor of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series. She is also a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist, trained in providing play...

Sharing Energy for Climate Communications: Improv and Embodied Activities promotional image

Sharing Energy for Climate Communications: Improv and Embodied Activities

Friday, February 16, 2024 10:00am to 12:00pm
Seamans Center

Benjamin Stasny is joining us from Colorado University at Boulder, where he is a PhD candidate studying the intersection of queer futurity, climate communication, and improvisational pedagogy. While in grad school, Ben has developed workshops that use theatrical techniques for sharing energy and sustaining hope in the face of climate change. He has led these workshops in Boulder, Chicago, London, and now Iowa City. Please use the Google form linked above to register for this event (limit 30...