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

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—The Art(s) of Inquiry and Activism

Tuesday, March 29, 2022 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Virtual

The Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research defines AR as “practice-based, practice-led research in the arts,” often an interdisciplinary creative research that acts as a “driver for critical thinking, creativity, and open innovation.” Many artists understand their art-making to be a means of asking soaring questions; of helping audiences grasp the complexity of wicked problems; of shocking, literally moving, or seducing participants into risking new solutions; on enacting the art of...

Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey promotional image

Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 3:00pm to 4:00pm
University of Iowa Pentacrest

Join us for a presentation from the Meskwaki Language Preservation Director Wayne Pushetonequa, "Meskwaki Language Revitalization: Our Journey."

Free and open to all. Reception to follow.

Co-sponsored by the Native American Student Association; the UI Old Capitol Museum; the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies; the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program; and Native American Council.

Amplifying Women's Voices: A Faculty & Guest Artist Recital Featuring the Lanta Horn Duo promotional image

Amplifying Women's Voices: A Faculty & Guest Artist Recital Featuring the Lanta Horn Duo

Thursday, March 10, 2022 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building

This concert will be livestreamed here: https://music.uiowa.edu/about/live-stream-concert-schedule

This recital is titled "Amplifying Women's Voices" and consists of music written by women, primarily in the late-20th and 21st centuries. Women are a significantly underrepresented group in the field of brass instrument performance. Some studies suggest reasons for this inequity stems from lack of role models, and others point to persistent stereotypes about women who play brass. Reports continue...

Humanities and Public Life in the Age of COVID promotional image

Humanities and Public Life in the Age of COVID

Thursday, March 10, 2022 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

How have engaged artists and scholars in the University of Iowa Press Humanities & Public Life Book Series responded pragmatically, pedagogically, and philosophically to the last two years?
 
The last few years have raised tough questions for publicly engaged artists and humanists. COVID shut down their projects, politics have divided communities, and protests against systemic racism have demanded that engaged scholars re-examine how they work with public partners and with students. As one way...

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT II) promotional image

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT II)

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

The University of Iowa Pentacrest Museums explores current exhibition Let Me Be Myself: The Life Story of Anne Frank through the Exhibition Spotlight program series in a special two-part virtual panel event. Pentacrest Museums Director of Education & Engagement, Carolina Kaufman will moderate discussion with panelists on a variety of related topics to share the story and legacy of Anne Frank and her impact on society. These sessions will illuminate how Frank's story has inspired new approaches...

The Annex, Amsterdam, and Understanding the Space of Anne Frank's Diary promotional image

The Annex, Amsterdam, and Understanding the Space of Anne Frank's Diary

Tuesday, March 8, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

As we await the arrival of the Anne Frank Tree, which will be planted on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on April 29, 2022, we encourage people of all ages to read the book that is at the heart of this event. Better yet—read it in community!

To provide context to your reading, we’re offering three in-person discussions at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St., Iowa City). All of the discussions are free and open to the general public. 

In this first session, Heike Kumpf, AIA, will...