Upcoming Events

Don't Panic! Rethinking How We Frame Difficult Content in the Classroom promotional image

Don't Panic! Rethinking How We Frame Difficult Content in the Classroom

Thursday, February 20, 2025 4:00pm
Phillips Hall
Join us for a conversation about trigger warnings, content alerts, and other approaches to teaching potentially upsetting topics — led by Newell Ann Van Auken, Associate Professor of Instruction, Division of World Languages, Literatures, & Cultures. Co-hosted by the Center for Language and Culture Learning, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS), and the Chinese Humanities and Arts Workshop (CHAW), an Obermann Working Group.
Artist Talk with Jerron Herman promotional image

Artist Talk with Jerron Herman

Thursday, February 20, 2025 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Public Space One
Join us for an inspiring conversation with acclaimed choreographer and disabled artist Jerron Herman, an artist compelled to create images of freedom.
Book Matters: Brady G’Sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch promotional image

Book Matters: Brady G’Sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch

Tuesday, February 25, 2025 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Prairie Lights Books
Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate recent works from Brady G’Sell and Meena Khandelwal, faculty in the University of Iowa Department of Anthropology and the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program. After the reading, Elana Buch, associate professor of anthropology, will join G’Sell and Khandelwal for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Light refreshments will follow.
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...
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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

A Letter to the Obermann Community

A Letter to Our Colleagues, Collaborators, and Friends The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies was founded on the belief that what makes colleges and universities invaluable and irreplaceable is that they bring people together for the express purpose of expanding horizons, using research and debate to test assumptions and claims, solving problems, and forming the habit of lifelong learning. At...
Man stretching animal hide for book

Sawyer Mellon Seminar Maps Cultural Exchanges Across Eurasia

International Scholars and Book Conservators Explore Premodern Texts Thousands of years before the advent of print, texts were recorded in manuscript form--written out by hand on papyrus, parchment, paper, silk, bamboo, or other materials. Scholars involved in the 2016-17 Mellon Sawyer Seminar at the University of Iowa are renewing their examination of these early texts, asking such questions...
The Taming poster

Riverside Theatre Talkbacks - A new Obermann collaboration

How can we work more closely with the University of Iowa? How can we bring voices beyond those of the actors and directors into the conversation? These were some of the questions that Sean Lewis, the new artistic director of Riverside Theatre, and Jennifer Holan, Riverside's Executive Director, asked the Obermann Center earlier this fall. Opening Up the Talkback Model Often, a talkback...

Free screening of STARVING THE BEAST, a new documentary exploring current issues in public higher education, Oct. 17

A new documentary that examines ongoing efforts to “disrupt and reform” America’s historic public universities will be shown at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 17, at at The Englert Theatre, 221 E. Washington Street, Iowa City. The film screening is free and open to the public. Starving the Beast tells the story of how public higher education has been defunded over the last three decades and makes a...

Have No Fear exhibit explores the role of Middle Eastern artists post 9/11

9/11 Unleashed Ethical Questions Like many current students, Rachel Winter (MA candidate, Religious Studies, CLAS) vividly remembers 9/11 as a pivotal moment of her early childhood. The day was already set to be a serious one, as her mother was scheduled to undergo a critical surgery at a hospital near downtown Chicago. As events unfolded on the east coast, it was unclear if other cities might...

Have No Fear - Exhibit explores the role of Middle Eastern artists post 9/11

9/11 Unleashed Ethical Questions Like many current students, Rachel Winter (MA candidate, Religious Studies) vividly remembers 9/11 as a pivotal moment of her early childhood. The day was already set to be a serious one as her mother was scheduled to undergo a critical surgery at a hospital near downtown Chicago. As events unfolded on the east coast, it was unclear if other cities might be...

Recent Events

Film History Now: A Conversation with Pardis Dabashi and Allyson Nadia Field

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Virtual
What does the practice of film history look like today? What different methods—from interdisciplinary inquiry to speculative historiography and public humanities projects—are scholars using to tell new stories about film culture? Please join us to discuss these and other questions with two highly accomplished scholars: Pardis Dabashi (Bryn Mawr College) and Allyson Nadia Field (University of Chicago). Dr. Dabashi will discuss her recently published monograph Losing the Plot: Form and Feeling in...
CLIMATE through a Wide Lens promotional image

CLIMATE through a Wide Lens

Thursday, April 25, 2024 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Old Capitol Museum
Rising seas, toxic rivers, deforestation, smoke-filled air—headlines remind us daily of the local, national, and international impacts of climate change. Join us for a wild pecha kucha ride through the effects of climate change with researchers who also tirelessly seek solutions. World-renowned climate scientist, Jerald Schnoor will open with big picture issues. That will set the stage for artist Isabel Barbuzza’s work on South American lithium salt mines, environmental literary scholar Eric...
Journal Publishing Now: A Conversation with Jennifer Bean, Lauren Cramer, and Patricia White  promotional image

Journal Publishing Now: A Conversation with Jennifer Bean, Lauren Cramer, and Patricia White

Tuesday, April 23, 2024 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Virtual
Please join us for a panel conversation about academic publishing with three esteemed editors of interdisciplinary journals: Jennifer Bean (University of Washington; Feminist Media Histories), Lauren Cramer (University of Toronto; liquid blackness), and Patricia White (Swarthmore College; Camera Obscura). The panelists will discuss the nuts-and-bolts of journal publishing (for would-be contributors as well as would-be editors), and they will also each reflect on key directions in the fields of...
Public Lecture: “Made to be Seen: Kongo Graphic Writing as a Basis for Rethinking the Transmission of Knowledge” - Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Visiting Scholar, School of Art and Art History promotional image

Public Lecture: “Made to be Seen: Kongo Graphic Writing as a Basis for Rethinking the Transmission of Knowledge” - Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Visiting Scholar, School of Art and Art History

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 5:30pm
Art Building West
Visiting Scholar Professor Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz will be giving a public lecture titled “Made to be Seen: Kongo Graphic Writing as a Basis for Rethinking the Transmission of Knowledge.” Professor Martínez-Ruiz is the Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of Roy Sieber at the Department of Art History at Indiana University. He is also Senior Research Associate in African Art and Its Diaspora at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town...
Joseph Graves. A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Discusses How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Some of Our Biggest Problems promotional image

Joseph Graves. A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Discusses How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Some of Our Biggest Problems

Saturday, April 13, 2024 10:45am to 11:30am
Phillips Hall
A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Discusses How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Some of Our Biggest Problems. A public talk by Joseph Graves
2024 Iowa City Darwin Day promotional image

2024 Iowa City Darwin Day

Saturday, April 13, 2024 10:00am to 12:30pm
Phillips Hall
Every year to mark Charles Darwin’s birthday, Iowa City Darwin Day organizes a two-day celebration of science designed to promote scientific literacy and increase public awareness of the contributions of science to society. The featured speakers for the 2024 events on April 12 and 13 are Joseph Graves Jr., Harmit Malik and Heather Sander. All talks are free and open to all.