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...

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News

Street pickers with can carriers in Matanzas, Cuba

Yellow Fever's History of Humans, Microbes, and Ideas

Jennifer New
Yellow fever was once a terrifying killer that violently took the lives of half of the people who contracted it. It killed workers building canals, soldiers engaged in sieges, and investors on fact-finding missions. A viral disease spread between humans and primates, it is caused by a species of mosquito that prefers clean, fresh water. Before this was proven decisively in 1901, yellow fever was a...

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

Jenna Hammerich
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

Jennifer New
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...
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Recent Events

Podcasting with Purpose: James Boo promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: James Boo

Thursday, March 4, 2021 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Calling all podcasters, podcast enthusiasts, and podcast newbies! Learn from expert podcasters about the craft of podcasting with purpose, from the nuts and bolts of recording and editing audio to the intellectual and creative labor of audio storytelling. As part of our goal to prepare graduate students for a wide range of careers serving the public good, Humanities for the Public Good is exploring new and innovative methods of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making. The Podcasting...

Dr. Robert Bullard: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice promotional image

Dr. Robert Bullard: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice

Monday, March 1, 2021 7:00pm
Virtual

Dr. Robert Bullard, the Father of Environmental Justice, will give a lecture and engage in a Q&A session.

Talk Title: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice

Climate change is the defining global environmental justice, human rights, and public health issue of the twenty-first century. The most vulnerable populations in the United States and around the world will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks because of where they live, their limited income and economic means, and their...

Fulbright Workshop for Graduate Students in the Humanities promotional image

Fulbright Workshop for Graduate Students in the Humanities

Monday, March 1, 2021 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Virtual

Please join us on Monday, March 1, 2021 from 1-2pm CT for an information session on the Fulbright U.S. Student Program geared toward master’s and doctoral students (applicants must be U.S. citizens). The workshop topics will include:

the basics of writing a Fulbright proposal how to find an affiliation abroad for your research or creative work how to plan the optimal time to apply while working with your advisor

UI Fulbright Faculty Mentors Professor Kathleen Newman (Spanish and...

Humanities Without Walls Info Session promotional image

Humanities Without Walls Info Session

Tuesday, February 23, 2021 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is proud to be a member of the Andrew W. Mellon–funded Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium, which fosters collaborative research and explores the contributions of humanities in the workplace.

HWW has provided the Obermann Center funding to help UI faculty prepare proposals for HWW seed grant applications (due in November 2021). To learn more about the seed grants and how to apply for them, we welcome you to attend one of our upcoming Zoom...

Podcasting with Purpose: Mark Riechers and Anne Strainchamps promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: Mark Riechers and Anne Strainchamps

Thursday, February 18, 2021 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Calling all podcasters, podcast enthusiasts, and podcast newbies! Learn from expert podcasters about the craft of podcasting with purpose, from the nuts and bolts of recording and editing audio to the intellectual and creative labor of audio storytelling. As part of our goal to prepare graduate students for a wide range of careers serving the public good, Humanities for the Public Good is exploring new and innovative methods of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making. The Podcasting...

COVID's Lessons: End of Life and Grief - An Obermann Conversation promotional image

COVID's Lessons: End of Life and Grief - An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, February 16, 2021 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

The past year has made the end of life and grief a daily communal event, as we receive numbers from the headlines and news from friends and family. In the West, death and grief have often been private acts, but COVID-19, along with the twin pandemic of racism and its inherent grief, has altered how we tend to these universal aspects of human experience. In this conversation, we'll hear from a palliative care physician, a hospice nurse, and a scholar regarding lessons from this past year. 

Parti...