Upcoming Events

Wide Lens: LISTENING promotional image

Wide Lens: LISTENING

Thursday, May 8, 2025 5:30pm
Voxman Music Building
In a world full of noise, we often try listening to something: conversations with colleagues and family, music in our headphones, videos blasting from our smartphones. We hear all these things daily, but what does it mean to truly listen? In what sense do devices also listen to us? What is the role of silence in listening? How has listening changed over time? Can political tensions be solved through “listening”? How is listening both an art and a science? This Wide Lens event brings together...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2025) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2025)

Saturday, February 15, 2025 11:59pm
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is currently accepting applications for its new International Fellowships Program, which 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 with...
Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, February 19, 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.
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

The Archeology of Ten Minutes Ago: Preserving the Artifacts of Border Crossing

Across campus and community, you’ll be seeing the poster for our upcoming symposium, Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice. We wanted a powerful image to anchor our communications for this event—one that captures the urgency and importance of archiving in today’s political climate, especially in the name of human rights. Living, breathing archives, uncomfortable, incriminating...

UI’s Iowa Native Spaces project works with Meskwaki, Ioway to bring historical perspectives to more Iowans

Reprinted from Iowa Now, this article features a project that was incubated via the Obermann Working Group program and has been directed by Jacki Rand (History, CLAS) who has been an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and Co-Director of the Obermann Graduate Institute, as well as former Graduate Institute Fellows Eric Zimmer and Dave De La Tore and Obermann HASTAC Scholar Mary Wise. Article by Chris...
Iowa City Archives Crawl logo

Iowa City Archives Crawl - Hold History in Your Hands!

On Saturday, February 24, Iowa City hosts its first archives crawl. You'll hold history in your hands. Get behind-the-scenes tours of local museums and libraries. Talk to experts who can help you with your own home-archiving projects. And learn about projects that scholars and artists are currently creating from the impressive archival holdings of local institutions. Between 11:00 am and 3:00...

February Digital Bridges Events

Two spring events hosted by our Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Save the dates for next spring! February 2 and 3: How to Harvest History, A talk and workshop with Rebecca Wingo, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Liberal Arts at Macalester College (PhD, History, University of Nebraska...

Typewriters for Eskimos: Imperialist Rhetoric & Puerto Rico

In 1898, soon-to-be U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge (R-Indiana) urged his fellow Congressmen to “administer government” to the “savages and senile peoples” of Puerto Rico, newly acquired by the U.S. “Shall we save them from [possession by other nations],” he cried, “to give them a self-rule of tragedy? It would be like giving a razor to a babe and telling it to shave itself. It would be like giving...
Christopher Newfield

Colliding Art Forms and Documenting Refugees: The Iphigenia Project

“We don’t collaborate, we collide!” declares Irina Patkanian as she sits down for a conversation with fellow artists Lisa Schlesinger and Marion Schoevaert to discuss their Iphigenia Project and its culminating piece, Iphigenia at Lesvos: Story of a Refugee. The project has been unfolding for several years and reflects not only current world events, but the three women’s process-oriented working...

Recent Events

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, September 19, 2024 5:00pm
Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Books 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. Applications for upcoming Book Ends workshops are due Sept. 19, 2024 (5 p.m.).
Application Deadline: Mellon Sawyer Seminar promotional image

Application Deadline: Mellon Sawyer Seminar

Monday, September 16, 2024 5:00pm
The Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminars program was established in 1994 to provide support for comparative research on historical and contemporary topics of scholarly significance. The seminars, named in honor of the Foundation’s long-serving third president, John E. Sawyer, bring together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields — mainly, but not exclusively, in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences — for intensive study of...
Book Ends Information Session (virtual) promotional image

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 8:30am to 9:00am
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...
Ten Years Too Long: Making the Flint Water Crisis Public Archive promotional image

Ten Years Too Long: Making the Flint Water Crisis Public Archive

Wednesday, July 10, 2024 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Flint Water Crisis Public Archive aims to aid community leaders, researchers, and the general public in better understanding what happened during the Flint Water Crisis. Without our intervention, we risk losing access to documents released regarding the crisis, stripping us of the opportunity to learn about these important events and their ongoing implications for communities in Michigan and beyond. Panelists will include the project's founder, who will discuss the upcoming launch of the...
Dissertation Camp promotional image

Dissertation Camp

Friday, June 7, 2024 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The 2024 dissertation writing camp for graduate students
Dissertation Camp promotional image

Dissertation Camp

Thursday, June 6, 2024 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The 2024 dissertation writing camp for graduate students