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...

View more events

Spacer

News

Civic Media: When Coding, Social Justice, and Creativity Meet

Lecture and workshop from Catherine D’Ignazio What happens when coding, creativity, and commitment to social justice come together? One answer is Catherine D’Ignazio. A researcher, designer, and software developer, D’Ignazio is Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization in the Journalism Department at Emerson College. She is also a Principal Investigator at the Emerson Engagement...

Digital Storytelling at Heart of Spring Digital Bridges Lineup

Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership is at a midway point. Generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the grant offers faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students at Grinnell College and The University of Iowa opportunities to experiment with collaborative practices in the humanities from 2015 through 2018. Virtual...

Successfully Aging in Place: Obermann Conversation focuses on keeping older residents in neighborhoods

Many of us hope to age in our own homes, but looking ahead, we wonder about everyday practicalities. What happens when we can no longer rake our leaves or change a light bulb in a hard-to-reach spot? The next Obermann Conversation features UI Aging Studies program director Mercedes Bern-Klug, communications consultant Susan Shullaw, and Tippie College of Business emeritus faculty member Nancy...

Student Loan Debt Topic of February Visit

On Monday, February 13, at 7:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Higher Education Policy & Sociology at Temple University, will give a public lecture on the crisis of college affordability and student loan debt. She will offer solutions for fixing the U.S. financial aid system to make higher education accessible to all, drawing on research published in her...

Snapshot of German Iowa in the Global Midwest Symposium

German Iowa and the Global Midwest was a three-day symposium (Oct. 6-8, 2016) that explored Iowa's multicultural heritage. Part of a larger series of linked events, the 2016 Obermann Humanities Symposium was a tremendous success, gaining considerable local, statewide, and even national attention. Highlights Frank Trommler, an Ida Beam speaker, gave two public talks. The first, in the public...

2017 Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows Announced

The 2017 Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy will meet from January 9-13, 2017. The group of 16 students were selected from a competitive pool representing five colleges and in disciplines ranging from Library and Information Science to Community and Behavioral Health. Now in its eleventh year, the Graduate Institute offers a competitively selected group of UI graduate...

Recent Events

The Art & Science of Attention — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

The Art & Science of Attention — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, March 25, 2020 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

NOTICE: This event has been postponed. We hope to reschedule soon. Please check back.

Please join us for this free, public Obermann Conversation about attention and focus. We are living in an age of distractibility. Understanding how our brains attend and focus, as well as what we can do to cultivate attention, is necessary for our effectiveness and happiness. 

Shaun Vecera's (Psychological and Brain Sciences) overarching work attempts to understand the basic yet complex mechanisms of...

Canceled
What Can Museums Become: "Future Media of Museums" promotional image

What Can Museums Become: "Future Media of Museums"

Saturday, March 7, 2020 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Art Building West

The 2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium, "What Can Museums Become?", will bring together a distinguished group of museum directors, curators, educators and artists who will reflect on the transformative work that museums perform in the twenty-first century.

 

The closing keynote lecture on Saturday will be delivered by Michelle Kuo, who is the Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. In "Future Media of Museums," she will explore the evolving impact of...

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Saturday, March 7 to Monday, March 9, 2020 (all day)

Museums have never been mere containers for objects, nor should they be. How might we draw strength from existing institutions to enable vibrant futures? How can we expand the communities who feel a sense of belonging within and around museums? What must we confront and transform to make this possible? Join the artists, curators, historians, educators, and thinkers who are asking, "What Can Museums Become?"

Keynote speakers include Johanna Burton, Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at...

What Can Museums Become, Relationality and Performance: A Critical Genealogy promotional image

What Can Museums Become, Relationality and Performance: A Critical Genealogy

Friday, March 6, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
University of Iowa Main Library

The 2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium, "What Can Museums Become?", will bring together a distinguished group of museum directors, curators, educators and artists who will reflect on the transformative work that museums perform in the twenty-first century.

Friday’s Keynote lecture: “Relationality and Performance: A Critical Genealogy” will be delivered by Amelia Jones, a feminist curator who is also the Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Research at the Roski School of Art and Design at...

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Friday, March 6 to Monday, March 9, 2020 (all day)

Museums have never been mere containers for objects, nor should they be. How might we draw strength from existing institutions to enable vibrant futures? How can we expand the communities who feel a sense of belonging within and around museums? What must we confront and transform to make this possible? Join the artists, curators, historians, educators, and thinkers who are asking, "What Can Museums Become?"

Keynote speakers include Johanna Burton, Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at...

What Can Museums Become: "Museum: Space, Trace, or Place?" promotional image

What Can Museums Become: "Museum: Space, Trace, or Place?"

Thursday, March 5, 2020 4:10pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

The 2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium, "What Can Museums Become?", will bring together a distinguished group of museum directors, curators, educators and artists who will reflect on the transformative work that museums perform in the twenty-first century.

The first keynote speaker will be Johanna Burton, whose expertise in performance studies has inflected her work as a curator, educator, scholar, and now as the Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University—one of the...