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...

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News

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...

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...
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Recent Events

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference) promotional image

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference)

Saturday, May 2, 2020 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this closing conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help wrap-up the yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” We make the turn to practices of performing and imagining Latinidades now and into the future by inviting leading scholars in the fields of Performance Studies, Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, and Latina/o/x Studies to participate in a closing conference. One set of speakers will discuss Latina/o/x cultural...

Canceled
Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference) promotional image

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference)

Friday, May 1 to Saturday, May 2, 2020 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this closing conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help wrap-up the yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” We make the turn to practices of performing and imagining Latinidades now and into the future by inviting leading scholars in the fields of Performance Studies, Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, and Latina/o/x Studies to participate in a closing conference. One set of speakers will discuss Latina/o/x cultural...

Canceled
Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference) promotional image

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference)

Thursday, April 30 to Saturday, May 2, 2020 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this closing conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help wrap-up the yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” We make the turn to practices of performing and imagining Latinidades now and into the future by inviting leading scholars in the fields of Performance Studies, Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, and Latina/o/x Studies to participate in a closing conference. One set of speakers will discuss Latina/o/x cultural...

Canceled

Postponed (Future Date TBD): Climate Change Literacy Teach-In — Earth Day 2020

Wednesday, April 22, 2020 9:30am to 4:20pm
Old Capitol Museum

NOTE: This event has been postponed, with a future date to be determined.

The Sustainability Charter Committee is organizing a Climate Change Literacy Teach-In, to be held on Earth Day, April 22, on campus. Professor Jerry Schnoor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, will provide a keynote address.

Earth Day Climate Change Literacy Teach-in Schedule Senate Chamber, Old Capitol 9:30 Jerry Schnoor 50 Years Since Earth Day: A Climate Emergency 10:10...

CANCELED: Humanities for the 21st Century: A conversation

Wednesday, April 15, 2020 4:30pm to 6:30pm
Old Capitol Museum

Update 3/11/2020: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED.

 

 

Latina/o/x Cultural Citizenships & Popular Belonging (Sawyer Seminar Symposium) promotional image

Latina/o/x Cultural Citizenships & Popular Belonging (Sawyer Seminar Symposium)

Friday, March 27, 2020 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

After having addressed issues surrounding formal citizenship and national belonging in the previous semester, this one-day symposium -- part of our yearlong Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar on “Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging” -- will bring subject area experts to discuss modalities of popular belonging (television, sports, music, literature, and more) in Latina/o/x contexts in the U.S.

Speakers include the following: Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and...

Canceled