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

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...

Engaged Filmmaking - Documentary Course Reflects Graduate Institute's Teachings

Nonfiction filmmaking is inherently collaborative. Anna Swanson [pictured in black shirt working with a student] asked the students in her "Publicly Engaged Documentary" course both to question and commit to the partnerships that such filmmaking necessitates. Go beyond getting a project done or thinking toward job skills, she recommended; instead, consider being an artist-advocate or a scholar...

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...

Recent Events

Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures — Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures — Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Thursday, September 21 to Saturday, September 23, 2023 (all day)

How can the history of activism in sports help us understand the dynamics shaping conflicts today? How might labor relations in sport be imagined differently? How does the structure of sporting entertainment provide opportunities and obstacles to activism, and how can activists navigate these challenges?

As fans flock to sports arenas to cheer for their favorite teams, these spaces are simultaneously important societal battlegrounds. From acts of political protest by players to legislative...

Black Online Culture, Blackfishing, and Digital Blackface and Welcoming Reception for Dr. André Brock, an Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor

Wednesday, September 20, 2023 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Please join us in welcoming Dr. André Brock with a receiption at the Iowa City Public Library the day before his talk on campus. There will be a talk by Dr. Brock at 6 p.m., followed by a reception at the Library at 7 p.m. Food & beverages will be provided: light appetizers, dessert, nonalcoholic beverages.

André L. Brock is  an associate professor at the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. He is an interdisciplinary scholar with an MA in English and Rhetoric from...

Creative Matters: Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw in Conversation with Elizabeth Oakes promotional image

Creative Matters: Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw in Conversation with Elizabeth Oakes

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Voxman Music Building

Join us in Voxman Recital Hall for an intimate and engaging conversation with the Grammy-award winning Attacca Quartet and Caroline Shaw, youngest-ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Elizabeth Oakes, professor of instruction in chamber music in the UI School of Music, will moderate the talk. The event is free and open to the public.

The members of the acclaimed Attacca Quartet—described by The New York Times as “exuberant, funky, and … exactingly nuanced”—are...

Creating Engaging Event Communications Plans — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop promotional image

Creating Engaging Event Communications Plans — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street

Are you planning academic events—symposiums, conferences, or public lectures—and don’t know where to start with your communications strategy? Where are the best places to publicize your event around the UI campus and Iowa City? What tools should you use? Join Lauren Cox (Assistant Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies) and Jenna Hammerich (Communications Specialist, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies) for an in-person Get It Done Workshop to learn about strategic communications for...

Humanities in Medicine: Dr. Liana Meffert promotional image

Humanities in Medicine: Dr. Liana Meffert

Monday, September 18, 2023 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Medical Education Research Facility

Reception will follow. Event is free and open to the public, but please register here. 

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Spring 2024) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Spring 2024)

Tuesday, September 12, 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...