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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027)

Friday, September 18, 2026 11:59pm
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2027 Obermann International Fellowships. This program 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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books Ends supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist UI faculty members with significant research responsibilities turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500 honorarium for two external...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

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...

News

Teaching Sustainability—Across the Disciplines

Teach-in Focuses on Sustainability Curricula Across Campus Across the globe, people strive for sustainable development, which the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development famously defined as a way of living that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” How can the University of Iowa campus address the great...

Marilynne Robinson to Deliver Lecture, "The American Scholar Now"

As part of the Creative Matters series, Marilynne Robinson will give a lecture titled "The American Scholar Now," on December 9 from 5:30-6:30 pm at The Englert Theatre. This event is free and open to the public. Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Lila, winner of...

2016 Graduate Institute Fellows Announced

Seventeen UI graduate students from across campus, representing four different colleges, have been selected for the seventh annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. This year's co-directors, Craig Just (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Jennifer Kayle (Dance), and Senior Graduate Fellows Anna Swanson (Cinematic Arts and Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies) and Jessica...

Diverse Voices "Write to Change the World" - The OpEd Project at the UI

Taking the Plunge in Public Writing — Women represent almost 50 percent of the world’s population. Why is it, then, that the range of voices heard in the world is incredibly narrow and comes from a tiny sliver of the population: mostly western, older, privileged, and overwhelmingly—85 percent!—male? University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Director Teresa Mangum wants to get...

Jessica Anthony: Graduate Institute Alumna Dances with and for the Underserved

Jessica Anthony is committed to using dance to tell previously silenced stories. A Visiting Professor in Dance, Anthony is currently co-directing Dancers in Company with fellow faculty member Michael Sakamoto, and the two are breathing new life into the 32-year old touring company. Dancers in Company has long held the mission of preparing University of Iowa dance students for the experience...
Don Quixote in Chinese

Don Quixote in 140 Characters

Can one of the world's most iconic books be boiled down to a Tweetable 140 characters? Don Quixote was parodied or plagiarized, depending on how you look at it, before Cervantes could even write the second volume chronicling the misadventures of an errant knight and his loyal sidekick. The 400-year old tome has inspired a plethora of adaptations, including ballets, symphonies, cartoons, films...

Recent Events

February 9-11: Racial Reckoning through Comics promotional image

February 9-11: Racial Reckoning through Comics

Thursday, February 9 6:30pm to Saturday, February 11, 2023 6:00pm
Iowa City Public Library/UI Obermann Center

For the next "Racial Reckoning Through Comics" event, we will engage in conversation with artists MariNaomi and Joe Sacco as well as scholars Candida Rifkind, Jorge Santos, and José Alaniz to discuss how colonial dynamics are involved in racialization processes. From the global to the local, from international conflicts to the everyday life in times of peace, our artists’ stories and our scholars’ analyses will explore how the grammar of comics can imagine, write, and draw anti-racist and anti...

HPG Summer '23 Humanities Labs Application Info Session promotional image

HPG Summer '23 Humanities Labs Application Info Session

Monday, January 23, 2023 3:00pm to 4:00pm
111 Church Street

Note: This event has been canceled. Please email obermann-center@uiowa.edu if you would like more information about the Humanities Lab opportunity.

The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning at the graduate level that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities with both a social...

Canceled
Anna Barker: “Why Mozart? Why Women? Why Now?” promotional image

Anna Barker: “Why Mozart? Why Women? Why Now?”

Wednesday, January 18, 2023 5:30pm to 6:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Professor Anna Barker (Asian & Slavic Languages & Literatures, UI) will share her enthusiasm for the music of Mozart and the Cedar Rapids Opera production of Cosí fan tutte: The Soap Opera, which will be performed on the following dates: 

Jan. 20, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22, 2023 at 2 p.m.

At the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids (123 3rd Ave SE).

The lecture is organized by the interdisciplinary Opera Studies Forum (via the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies), and is free and open to...

2023 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing (via Zoom) promotional image

2023 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing (via Zoom)

Thursday, January 12, 2023 10:00am to 12:30pm
Virtual

This series of two workshops will focus on best feedback and commenting practices to help students improve their writing and their learning. Faculty from different fields will lead presentations and discussions on the following topics:

Commenting on intermediate and final stages of writing projects Teaching commenting and feedback skills to TAs Designing effective peer review sessions Developing and implementing criteria for student self-assessment of writing

Vickie Molloy from the...

2023 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing (via Zoom) promotional image

2023 Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing (via Zoom)

Tuesday, January 10, 2023 10:00am to 12:30pm
Virtual

This series of two workshops will focus on best feedback and commenting practices to help students improve their writing and their learning. Faculty from different fields will lead presentations and discussions on the following topics:

Commenting on intermediate and final stages of writing projects Teaching commenting and feedback skills to TAs Designing effective peer review sessions Developing and implementing criteria for student self-assessment of writing

Vickie Molloy from the...

HPG Summer '23 Humanities Labs Application Info Session promotional image

HPG Summer '23 Humanities Labs Application Info Session

Tuesday, December 13, 2022 11:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning at the graduate level that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities with both a social challenge and skills valued in multiple career settings. The Lab grant will be awarded to one or more faculty members from humanities or humanities-adjacent...