Upcoming Events

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...
Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Thursday, March 27 to Friday, March 28, 2025 (all day)
As calls for transnational solidarity among reproductive justice movements emerge, communities are asking how reproductive liberation is tethered to various social movements. Directed by Lina-Maria Murillo (Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies and History) and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies), this symposium brings together scholars and artists with local, regional, and global perspectives to bear on the pursuit of reproductive justice as we...
Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs promotional image

Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs

Friday, April 11, 2025 12:00pm to 1:30pm
111 Church Street
Join the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Graduate College for lunch and an introduction to pitching your research 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...
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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

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...

Colored Conventions Project - Lecture & Workshop with Gabrielle Foreman

Gabrielle Foreman Visit, November 5-7, 2017 — As part of Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership, a multi-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support collaborative practices in the humanities, digital humanist Gabrielle Foreman will visit the University of Iowa and give a public lecture and a digital humanities workshop....

Introducing Our Fall 2017 Fellows

Blaine Greteman, English, CLAS Greteman is at work on a book, Networking English Print, which draws from his digital humanities project, Shakeosphere: Mapping Early Modern Social Networks. After mining the publication history of nearly every book printed in English before 1800, Greteman and his collaborators mapped the connections between printers, authors, publishers, and booksellers. By...

Incarcerate. Educate. Integrate. Prisoner access to education focus of September conference and new speaker series

In a recent meeting between prospective students and University of Iowa faculty, questions came up that sounded pretty routine: “Am I going to get credit for this?” “Will there be homework?” “What’s the time commitment?” These weren’t incoming freshman, however, but a group of men currently incarcerated at the Iowa Medical & Classification Center (“Oakdale”) in Coralville, IA. They were...

2018-19 Program Dates and Application Deadlines

FALL APPLICATION DEADLINES Obermann Center Fellows-in-Residence, Spring 2018 Application deadline: Sept. 12, 2017 The Obermann Fellows-in-Residence program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...
Jessica Pleyel ironing

Jessica Pleyel: Mending through Art

Wax guns, duck decoys, and nail polish. These are some of the items in artist Jessica Pleyel’s community engagement toolkit. The Obermann Graduate Institute alumna is currently bringing audiences together to consider gun violence against women, especially by domestic partners. Her exhibition, To(get)her: Meeting/Melting/Mending, had a month-long run at the Des Moines Social Club this spring, and...

Recent Events

Historically Speaking: History PhDs Tell Stories of Working Outside the Academy

Monday, February 24, 2020 3:30pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library
Join us on Monday, February 24 from 3:30pm to 5:30PM at the Iowa City Public Library meeting rooms for a panel and small group discussion by history PhD alumni, who will discuss their pathways to career diversity:  Karen Christianson Director, Department of Public Engagement, Newberry Library Sylvea Hollis Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, National Park Service Eric Zimmer Historian, Vantage Point Historical Services This event is part of Humanities for the Public Good, an Andrew W...
ICE Enforcement: Impacts on Community Health and Well-Being — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

ICE Enforcement: Impacts on Community Health and Well-Being — An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, February 4, 2020 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
With attention drawn to events at the border, it can be easy to overlook the population of immigrants who live in fear of being deported or having family members deported. The effects of raids and other maneuvers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have deep impact on the overall health and well-being of Latino/a/x communities here in Iowa and across the country. The possibility of raids and deportation cause anxiety and depression, which affect the workplace and schools, as well as the...
Informational Meeting for Summer Humanities for the Public Good Internships promotional image

Informational Meeting for Summer Humanities for the Public Good Internships

Friday, January 31, 2020 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
Learn about the Summer 2020 Humanities for the Public Good Internship program. In addition to learning about the opportunities, expectations of participants, application process, you will also have the chance to talk with one of last year's interns and hear about their experience. 
Imagining the Latina/o/x Midwest (Sawyer Seminar Symposium) promotional image

Imagining the Latina/o/x Midwest (Sawyer Seminar Symposium)

Friday, January 31, 2020 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library
In this one-day symposium -- part of our yearlong Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar on “Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging” -- three speakers will examine the potentials and pitfalls of imagining Latinidades in the Midwestern U.S. Building off the past success of the Latina/o Midwest Symposium, this kickoff event for the spring semester will draw attention to the ways in which Latina/o/x space and identity might be imagined and practiced outside of traditionally...
Manuscript Forum (Imagining Latinidades Mellon Sawyer Seminar) promotional image

Manuscript Forum (Imagining Latinidades Mellon Sawyer Seminar)

Thursday, January 30, 2020 11:30am to 12:30pm
111 Church Street
Manuscript Forum led by Dr. Sujey Vega, one of the Series Editors of the Latinos in Chicago and the Midwest Series (University of Illinois Press). Dr. Vega will share tips about the publishing process particularly for books.  This is a pre-event that is part of our Imagining the Latina/o/x Midwest Symposium taking place on Friday, January 31st at the Iowa City Public Library from 9:00am-4:30pm (https://events.uiowa.edu/28068). See our website for additional information: https:/...
United States of Anxiety: Building a Multiracial Democracy in 2020 promotional image

United States of Anxiety: Building a Multiracial Democracy in 2020

Monday, January 27, 2020 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Levitt Center for University Advancement
From WNYC Studios in New York City, The United States of Anxiety is a podcast about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future. Underlying almost every disagreement, every fervent debate as we approach the 2020 election is one basic question: Who is America for? This is an old question. Many of the political and social arguments we’re having now started in the aftermath of the Civil War, when Americans set out to do something no other country had tried before -- to build...