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

Relying on the Unreliable: Historian Catherine Stewart Examines 1930s Domestic Workers

Obermann Fellow-in-Residence Catherine Stewart’s current book project, The New Maid, relies in part on a highly unreliable source—student essays. Specifically, Stewart is interested in what is divulged through a cache of papers written by students at a private women’s college in the South in response to the topic, “Negro servants in my household.” Written between 1928 and 1940, the nearly 100...
Ashley Cheyemi McNeil

Ashley Cheyemi McNeil Appointed 2019-21 HPG Postdoctoral Scholar

Interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Ashley Cheyemi Rae McNeil has been appointed the 2019–2021 Postdoctoral Scholar for the Andrew W. Mellon–Funded Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) initiative. McNeil earned her bi-national PhD in English from Georgia State University and in American Studies from the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. As...

Misfitting: Symposium Connects Disabilities Studies Scholars, Shines Light on Need for Scholarly Leadership at UI

Tricia Zebrowski and Douglas Baynton pulled off a wonderful finale this spring. The two retiring professors—Zebrowski is in her first year as an Emeritus in Communication Sciences & Disorders, while Baynton retired in May 2019 from History—co-directed “Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered,” the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium. During three days in April, the pair helped to host eminent...

Ortiz-Guzmán Appointed 2019-20 Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow

Directors of the 2019–20 Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging,” have selected interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Lisa Ortiz-Guzmán as the Seminar’s Postdoctoral Fellow. Ortiz-Guzmán earned her PhD in Educational Policy Studies with graduate minors in Latina/o Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana...

Not Distracted: Aiden Bettine Balances Traditional Scholarship and Public Engagement Projects

Aiden Bettine, the first Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Graduate Fellow, is already embodying the goals of this grant. A historian with a strong commitment to public scholarship, Aiden is pushing the boundaries of his discipline in experimental and collaborative directions. With funding and support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the...

Four CLAS Graduate Students Chosen for National Humanities Center Education Program

Four University of Iowa PHD candidates have been selected to attend the 2019 Graduate Student Summer Residency Program at the National Humanities Center in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. From July 15 to 26, Aiden M. Bettine (History), Enrico Bruno (English), Hadley Galbraith (French & Italian), and Mary Wise (History) will join approximately 100 fellow humanities graduate students...

Recent Events

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta promotional image

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta

Friday, April 7, 2023 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) (she/her) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast Media...

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College promotional image

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College

Friday, April 7, 2023 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Biology Building East

Patricia (Patty) Brennan is interested in the morphological evolution of genital morphology in vertebrates and the mechanisms that drive genital diversification, sexual conflict in particular. She has a BSc in Marine Biology from her native Colombia, where she studied the cardiac physiology of marine mammals. She went on to work in the Galapagos Islands aboard a research vessel (R/V Odyssey). Brennan completed her PhD dissertation at Cornell University, where she studied the breeding biology and...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens

Wednesday, April 5 7:00pm to Saturday, April 22, 2023 9:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This three-week screening and discussion series celebrates the pioneering work of Black women filmmakers from the 1970s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the first-ever Black women’s film festival, the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, the series features rare and recently restored works from groundbreaking directors including Maya Angelou, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Kathleen Collins, Monica Freeman, and Zeinabu irene Davis, among others. The majority of the screenings...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Short Films by Maya Angelou, Cheryl Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Short Films by Maya Angelou, Cheryl Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 7:00pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Come to FilmScene for a literary-themed selection of short films by and about poets. The evening will include Maya Angelou's directorial debut, Cheryl Fabio's cinematic portrait of her mother, the poet/performer/musician Sarah Webster Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson's recent documentary about the Enikalley Coffeehouse, a key space for Black LGBTQ artmaking and activism in 1980s Washington, D.C. Cheryl Fabio and Michelle Parkerson will join us by Zoom for a post-screening conversation moderated by...

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price promotional image

Frequências: Screening of Cette Maison (Miryam Charles), and a Conversation with Yasmina Price

Saturday, April 1, 2023 4:30pm to 6:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Miryam Charles is a Haitian-Canadian director, producer and cinematographer living in Montreal. She has produced several short and feature films. Her films have been presented in various festivals in Quebec and internationally. Her first feature film This House was presented at the Berlinale, the AFI film festival this year and was also included in the TIFF Top 10...

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program promotional image

Frequências: Screening: Janaína Oliveira Short Film Program

Saturday, April 1, 2023 2:30pm to 4:15pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Janaína Oliveira is a curator and researcher who holds a doctorate in history and was a Fulbright scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University (USA). She is one of the founders of FICINE—Fórum Itinerante de Cinema Negro. Her research focuses on Black Brazilian and aphrodiasporic cinemas and also on African cinematographies. She has served as a...