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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

Summer Workshop Helps Humanities PhD Candidates Expand Options

Last July, two University of Iowa graduate students expanded their sense of how they might use their training as humanities scholars. Erica Damman (Environmental Humanities, CLAS) and Noaquia Callahan (History, CLAS) were part of the first cohort of graduate student Fellows to participate in the Alternative Academic Career Workshop for Pre-Doctoral Students in the Humanities. The Workshop is...
Ana Rodriguez and Denise Filios

Connecting 400-Year-Old Knight Errant to UI Students and Community

This fall, University of Iowa students are discovering the charms of an aged knight-errant, his earthy sidekick, and a cast of colorful characters. In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez and Denise Filios, professors in Spanish and Portuguese, are co-directing the Obermann–International Programs Humanities Symposium, “Parody, Plagiarism...
I am, I Will, I am Afraid

Traci Molloy and UAY Students Unveil Piece

Traci Molloy, a Brooklyn-based artist and a participant in the 2014 Obermann Summer Seminar, returns to Iowa City in early October to give a lecture and unveil a new artwork that she created with local teenagers. Titled “I Am, I Will, I’m Afraid,” the work combines photography and text composed by twelve self-described youth “outliers” attending United Action for Youth’s Summer Art Workshops. It...
Jack and Trudi Rosazza

Supporting the Obermann Center — Jack and Trudi Rosazza

The support that the Obermann Center receives from friends such as Jack and Trudi Rosazza helps us to deepen and extend our work. This year, for example, we were able to send our director, Teresa Mangum, to a workshop with the OpEd Project. This visionary organization helps underrepresented voices land on the opinion pages of our nation’s newspapers, thereby changing discourses. In November, the...

THE YES MEN leads workshop on UI campus

POROI co-sponsored the YES MEN this August in their visit with the UI Lecture Committee. During that visit, the YES MEN lead a workshop in which they broke down their signature, satirical style of creative, performance-based activism, advising participants on their own change-making initiatives. Participants included student government representatives working to eliminate plastic waste from the...
Dave Gould

To the Class of 2019 - Inspiration from Obermann Public Scholar Dave Gould

David Gould, Obermann Public Scholar, is spending this fall semester introducing University of Iowa undergraduates to a cast of amazing, inspiring visitors. From a master storyteller from The Moth and musicians from the Cirque du Soleil , to the co-founder of Girls on the Run and the creator of an online funding company, this eclectic group of guests will help students consider what makes for a...

Recent Events

Summer Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop (2022-23) promotional image

Summer Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop (2022-23)

Tuesday, June 14, 2022 5:00pm

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Books Ends—Obermann/OVPR 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 for upcoming Book Ends workshops are due June 14, 2022 (5 p.m.) and September 15...

Stars and Stones promotional image

Stars and Stones

Thursday, May 5, 2022 9:00pm
Theatre Building

Iowa New Play Festival 2022 Production

Stars and Stones
By Emma Silverman
Directed by Sarah Gazdowicz
Thursday, May 5 at 5:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Alan MacVey Theatre, UI Theatre Building

A young Jewish woman reckons with the ghosts of her past and the apparitions of the present during and after a research trip to Poland. As she is launched back and forth through history, she is forced to consider the nature of her project while a scattering of strangers embark on their own moralistic...

Stars and Stones promotional image

Stars and Stones

Thursday, May 5, 2022 5:30pm
Theatre Building

Iowa New Play Festival 2022 Production

Stars and Stones
By Emma Silverman
Directed by Sarah Gazdowicz
Thursday, May 5 at 5:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Alan MacVey Theatre, UI Theatre Building

A young Jewish woman reckons with the ghosts of her past and the apparitions of the present during and after a research trip to Poland. As she is launched back and forth through history, she is forced to consider the nature of her project while a scattering of strangers embark on their own moralistic...

Application Deadline: Summer 2022 Humanities Without Walls Seed Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Summer 2022 Humanities Without Walls Seed Grants

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 5:00pm

In collaboration with the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls (HWW) project led by the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Obermann Center is offering summer 2022 Seed Grants to support the development of applications for the final HWW Grand Research Challenge. The Obermann Seed Grants provide up to $10,000 for faculty-led teams to develop proposals this summer which they will then submit to HWW, for a grant of up to $150,000 for...

Young Writers Respond promotional image

Young Writers Respond

Friday, April 29, 2022 7:30pm to 8:30pm
Phillips Hall

This year, the Iowa Youth Writing Project, IC Speaks, and the UI Center for Human Rights have asked students to respond to the legacy of Anne Frank via various prompts—reflecting on Anne's experience as a hidden person and her message about social justice. In this event, writers from junior high age through undergraduates will share their entries. We'll hear from local voices, as well as from young people around the world who participated in these calls.

This event follows the Anne Frank Tree...

Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony promotional image

Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony

Friday, April 29, 2022 5:00pm
Macbride Hall

On April 29, 2022, a new tree will be planted on the University of Iowa’s Pentacrest—a sapling propagated from the immense horse chestnut tree that grew in the courtyard behind the annex where Anne Frank and her family hid for 761 days during World War II. This living symbol of Anne’s spirit and humanitarian message is the 13th Anne Frank Sapling to be planted in the United States.

This event is free and open to the public.

NOTICE: Because of weather, the 4/29 tree planting ceremony has been...