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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027)

Friday, September 18, 2026 11:59pm
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2027 Obermann International Fellowships. This program offers dedicated space, time, and funding for interdisciplinary scholars to collaborate on innovative research at the University of Iowa. Up to eight international fellowships will be granted every academic year. Applicants must be active researchers at an accredited institution of higher learning outside of the United States or independent researchers/artists...

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books Ends supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist UI faculty members with significant research responsibilities turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500 honorarium for two external...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

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...

News

NHA Advocacy Day

Obermann Director Teresa Mangum joined hundreds of humanities faculty members, center directors, and leaders of professional organizations like the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association in Washington, DC. As part of the annual NHA Advocacy Day, they shared the educational, social, and economic benefits of the arts and humanities. The NHA especially encourages...
Esco in his 20s wearing a suit and bowtie

An Aerial View—Remembering Esco Obermann

Esco Obermann embodied interdisciplinarity. That's him in the photo to the right, upside down on his parents' windmill in Yarmouth, Iowa. (Look closely—the soles of his shoes are aligned with the motor.) Esco, one of nine siblings, grew up doing acrobatics on his family's farm in southeastern Iowa—backbends on bulls, rope stunts in haylofts, L-sits on windmills—as if driven to seek new...
Nina G

Nina G: Stuttering comic walks the line between satire and issue advocacy

Bay Area comedian Nina G works tough territory. She plays gigs at clubs with names like “Nightlife on Mars” and “The Laugh Boat.” She stutters. And she’s really funny about it. While most stand-up comics engage their audiences through relatable stories, Nina G’s work pulls that kind observational humor into the broader intersection of comedy, satire and issue advocacy. That’s tough territory...
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Humanities for the Public Good Seeks Post-Doc, Research Assistant

While we tend to assume one attends graduate school in the humanities to become a professor, deep immersion in anthropology, art, history, literature, philosophy, and other cultural disciplines is excellent preparation for all kinds of workplaces--especially when content is enhanced by competencies sought by a variety of employers. In fall 2018, the University of Iowa received a four-year grant...

Save the date! March 8 Career Diversity in the Humanities Working Symposium

SAVE THE DATE! Career Diversity in the Humanities: An Obermann Humanities for the Public Good Working Symposium March 8 from 9–5 at the Iowa City Public Library Across the country, leaders of PhD programs in the humanities face a conundrum. How can a department honor the subjects, methods, and practices of their disciplines while also preparing graduates for diverse careers? To...
Robert Wise

Nathan Platte's Fascination with the Sounds of an Unassuming Director

Robert Wise doesn’t make sense the same way some directors and their work do. He’s not labyrinthine like Hitchcock or surreal like Lynch. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that some of his films were created by the same person. It is this eclecticism that attracted musicologist Nathan Platte, a faculty member in the School of Music and a Fall 2018 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, to write a book about...

Recent Events

Women’s Basketball in Iowa: From 6-on-6 to NCAA — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Women’s Basketball in Iowa: From 6-on-6 to NCAA — An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, September 12, 2023 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

The recent success of the University of Iowa’s women’s basketball team generated excitement and interest in women’s sports across the community. Before there was NCAA women’s basketball, there was 6-on-6 girls basketball, a form of the sport that the state of Iowa remained committed to until 1993. This Obermann Conversation with University of Iowa faculty, basketball coach, and former players, will contextualize the past, discuss the present, and look forward to the future of women’s basketball...

Out of the Archive Film Series: Kasi Lemmons' EVE'S BAYOU: Director's Cut (1997) promotional image

Out of the Archive Film Series: Kasi Lemmons' EVE'S BAYOU: Director's Cut (1997)

Tuesday, September 5, 2023 6:30pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This fall, the Out of the Archive screening and discussion series continues at FilmScene! This year’s theme is “Envisioning Blackness,” and the series will showcase the vibrant, multifaceted tradition of Black cinema by presenting rarely screened and/or recently restored films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0). The majority of the screenings will include food and drink receptions and post-screening discussions with UI community members as well as...

Reception for Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Saturday, September 2, 2023 4:00pm
Theatre Building

Reception for Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Come meet Dr. T! The reception will be the final event in Dr. T’s visit. Folks are encouraged to come ask questions and share the overlap in their own work with issues of self-actualization, self-determination, and artistry. In other words, time to network!

Refreshments will be available.

Lecture by Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Tawnya Pettiford-Wates promotional image

Lecture by Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Thursday, August 31, 2023 7:00pm
Theatre Building

The Department of Theatre Arts hosts Ida Beam Distinguished Professor Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, giving her lecture titled “From Shakespeare to Shange.” 

Every artist must question who they are. But for an artist in the performing arts, especially for an artist of color, that question cannot be ignored—not by the student artist, the professional artist or the teachers and professors that teach them, mentor them and ultimately evaluate them. This lecture draws from Tawnya Pettiford-Wates’...

Obermann/OVPR Book Ends Information Session promotional image

Obermann/OVPR Book Ends Information Session

Thursday, August 31, 2023 9:00am to 9:30am
Virtual

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends—an 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. Read more about the program.

Interested applicants are invited to learn more about the...

Out of the Archive Film Series: Cauleen Smith's DRYLONGSO (1998) promotional image

Out of the Archive Film Series: Cauleen Smith's DRYLONGSO (1998)

Tuesday, August 22, 2023 7:00pm to 9:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This fall, the Out of the Archive screening and discussion series continues at FilmScene! This year’s theme is “Envisioning Blackness,” and the series will showcase the vibrant, multifaceted tradition of Black cinema by presenting rarely screened and/or recently restored films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0).

The opening film for the 2023-24 series is Cauleen Smith’s debut feature film Drylongso (1988, 86 mins). A lost treasure of 1990s DIY...