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

Two UI Students Selected as HWW Fellows

Two University of Iowa graduate students have been named as Humanities Without Walls consortium 2018 pre-doctoral workshop fellows. Lydia Maunz-Breese (English, CLAS) and Makayla Steiner (English, CLAS) will be among 30 students from the consortium who will participate in a three-week career diversity workshop in Chicago. Under the leadership of the Chicago Humanities Festival...

First Iowa City Archive Crawl Celebrates Treasures in Local Collections

Hold History in Your Hands at the First-Ever Iowa City Archives Crawl What gems hide in plain sight in Iowa City’s libraries, museums, and archives? At the area’s first-ever archives crawl, visitors can snoop in between the pages of historic diaries, read other people's mail, hold feathers and fossils, and peer into mysteries revealed by historic artifacts like swords and locks of...
Graduate Institute participants doing a movement exercise

UI students learn the true meaning of public engagement

Thank you to Emily Nelson and Iowa Now for this article about the 2018 Obermann Graduate Institute Some scholars may consider giving a presentation, curating an exhibit, or hosting a medical screening for community groups to be a form of public engagement. Although each of these is an important contribution, the annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy encourages...
Exhibit of backpacks found along the Mexican border

The Archeology of Ten Minutes Ago: Preserving the Artifacts of Border Crossing

Across campus and community, you’ll be seeing the poster for our upcoming symposium, Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice. We wanted a powerful image to anchor our communications for this event—one that captures the urgency and importance of archiving in today’s political climate, especially in the name of human rights. Living, breathing archives, uncomfortable, incriminating...

UI’s Iowa Native Spaces project works with Meskwaki, Ioway to bring historical perspectives to more Iowans

Reprinted from Iowa Now, this article features a project that was incubated via the Obermann Working Group program and has been directed by Jacki Rand (History, CLAS) who has been an Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and Co-Director of the Obermann Graduate Institute, as well as former Graduate Institute Fellows Eric Zimmer and Dave De La Tore and Obermann HASTAC Scholar Mary Wise. Article by Chris...
Iowa City Archives Crawl logo

Iowa City Archives Crawl - Hold History in Your Hands!

On Saturday, February 24, Iowa City hosts its first archives crawl. You'll hold history in your hands. Get behind-the-scenes tours of local museums and libraries. Talk to experts who can help you with your own home-archiving projects. And learn about projects that scholars and artists are currently creating from the impressive archival holdings of local institutions. Between 11:00 am and 3:00...

Recent Events

Pride Week: Trans Day of Visibility promotional image

Pride Week: Trans Day of Visibility

Friday, March 31, 2023 12:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Join us in the Pride Lounge (Iowa Memorial Union Room 209) from noon to 5 p.m. to spend time with community, honoring this important day. Follow our Instagram (@uiowapridehouse) for further TDOV engagement!

Frequências: Interventions by Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Michael B. Gillespie, and Cris Lira promotional image

Frequências: Interventions by Tatiana Carvalho Costa, Michael B. Gillespie, and Cris Lira

Friday, March 31, 2023 10:30am to 11:45am
Stanley Museum of Art

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

Tatiana Carvalho Costa is a curator and teacher. She is a doctoral student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais where she researches Afro-Brazilian epistemologies and Black Brazilian Cinema, in particular the recent production of short films. She works as programmer and juror of festivals and recently joined the curatorial team of the Mostra de Cinema de...

Crosscurrents in Time: A Video Trilogy by Aline Motta (Exhibition) promotional image

Crosscurrents in Time: A Video Trilogy by Aline Motta (Exhibition)

Friday, March 31, 10:00am to Monday, July 31, 2023 4:30pm
Stanley Museum of Art

This multi-channel installation of three related videos will be on view in the Lauridsen Family Gallery at the Stanley Museum of Art. Aline Motta is a participant in Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora, an Oberman Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Project Award, held at the University of Iowa March 30 - April 1, 2023.

Among the Atlantic waters that connect Brazil, Portugal, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, contemporary artist Aline Motta engages with...

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award promotional image

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora — 2022-23 Obermann Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award

Friday, March 31 to Saturday, April 1, 2023 (all day)

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora

From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...

Verdi's Falstaff and Shakespeare's: An introduction to the Metropolitan Opera performance. Lecture by Miriam Gilbert promotional image

Verdi's Falstaff and Shakespeare's: An introduction to the Metropolitan Opera performance. Lecture by Miriam Gilbert

Thursday, March 30, 2023 5:30pm to 6:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Prof. Miriam Gilbert will explore the relationship between Verdi's opera and its Shakespearean sources.

Free and open to the public. The talk will also be available on zoom: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/9153651333

Sponsored by the Opera Studies Forum and the Obermann Center.

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Screenings of República and Dazed Flesh promotional image

Frequências Humanities Symposium & IP Major Projects Award: Screenings of República and Dazed Flesh

Thursday, March 30, 2023 4:15pm to 5:45pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora.

Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora brings together filmmakers, artists, scholars, and critics from across the globe in order to inaugurate a practice of collective attunement. How can we best attune ourselves to the waves set in motion by this new cinema? How does Brazil’s current...