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

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...

The Power of Programming: Sam Rebelsky

Sam Rebelsky is a professional problem-solver. That is, he’s a computer scientist. Whether he’s tackling a programming task or confronting the social and ethical problems of his discipline, he relishes breaking down complex problems, coming up with step-by-step solutions, and teaching others to do the same. A professor of computer science at Grinnell College and a Fall 2018 Obermann Fellow-in...
HPG logo

Discovering Ecosystems of Graduate Studies - A slide presentation

In this short slide presentation, Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum provides background, goals, and opportunities related to the Humanities for the Public Good program, which is funded by a generous 4-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. https://youtu.be/LFdaB0uGLn0

The Accidental Ethnographer

Tammy Nyden calls herself an accidental ethnographer. She is a scholar and mother of two, but it’s the practice of ethnography, in which one embeds herself within a community in order to study it, that best captures her current intellectual and personal passion. Her now-teenaged son was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder eight years ago, and with autism two...
Iphigenia Point Blank image of a woman's face

Iphigenia Point Blank—On stage and in the community

Two summers ago as part of the Obermann Interdisciplinary Grant program, a group of artists commandeered the Obermann attic and covered tables and walls with prints of Greek vases and statues, photos of George W. Bush and fashion models on the catwalk, a golden blanket made of foil, and film stills of abandoned life jackets. The rich array of objects and images proved to be the birthing site for a...

Recent Events

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Students meet in discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics.

Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14. See writingcenter.uiowa.edu/graduate-student-programs for more details.

Please note that we have a limited number of spaces, so priority is given to students who are post-proposal, have mostly completed...

Wide Lens: Memory promotional image

Wide Lens: Memory

Friday, May 5, 2023 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Stanley Museum of Art

What is forgotten? What is remembered? How reliable are our recollections? What ethical questions could or should guide how we engage with others’ memories? Join us at the Stanley Museum of Art as six scholar-artists reflect on memory from the perspective of various disciplines.

This is the second gathering in the UI's new Wide Lens series, in which researchers, scholars, and artists from across the university briefly present their work on a shared topic of interest, pecha kucha–style, at the...

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2023) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2023)

Tuesday, May 2, 2023 5:00pm

Obermann Center Faculty Fellows (formerly Fellows-in-Residence) fully devote themselves to projects within an interdisciplinary community. The program supports artists, researchers, and scholars during periods when focus and feedback are crucial. The 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...

Finding Funding: Wise and Witty Ways to Search — An Obermann Get It Done workshop with Mary Blackwood promotional image

Finding Funding: Wise and Witty Ways to Search — An Obermann Get It Done workshop with Mary Blackwood

Thursday, April 27, 2023 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

Do you have a great idea for a project but need some funding to accomplish it? Learn about how committing an hour of your week can pay off! In this session, Mary Blackwood, Senior Sponsored Research Specialist at the UI Division of Sponsored Programs, will talk about how to set yourself up for grant-seeking success, how to manage roadblocks on the journey, and why anyone—from experienced faculty to newbie grad student—can increase their chances of getting a grant award by finding the right...

Craft, Critique, Culture Conference promotional image

Craft, Critique, Culture Conference

Thursday, April 20 to Saturday, April 22, 2023 (all day)
English-Philosophy Building

Our embeddedness within a more-than-human world is one part of what defines us as human. In the 1940s, Iowa-based environmentalist Aldo Leopold offered a land-based ethic: “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.” We hope to hear papers pursuing questions within and adjacent to the environment, broadly conceived. We are interested in how life is becoming less livable and for whom that is happening...

University of Iowa Lecture Committee: Jelani Cobb - "The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today" promotional image

University of Iowa Lecture Committee: Jelani Cobb - "The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today"

Wednesday, April 19, 2023 7:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Please join Jelani Cobb, author and Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, for his lecture "The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today."

All University lectures are free and open to the public. 

This lecture is sponsored by the following University of Iowa Departments and Programs: African American Studies, American Studies, Cinematic Arts, CLAS Dean's Office, Communication Studies, History, Magid center for Writing, English, Obermann Center, and the Provost's Office. 

Canceled