Upcoming Events

Book Matters: Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch promotional image

Book Matters: Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch

Tuesday, February 25, 2025 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Prairie Lights Books
Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate recent works from Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal, faculty in the University of Iowa Department of Anthropology and the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program. After the reading, Elana Buch, associate professor of anthropology, will join G’sell and Khandelwal for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Light refreshments will follow.
Radical Hope: Cultural Workers and Community Leaders in Conversation promotional image

Radical Hope: Cultural Workers and Community Leaders in Conversation

Monday, March 3, 2025 6:25pm to 7:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Join Dr. Leigh Patel, Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor, for a panel discussion and conversation with Iowa cultural workers and community leaders. Dr. Patel is a Professor of Educational Foundation, Organizations and Policy at University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Patel's work focuses on the ways that formal education has consistently acted as one site of coloniality and oppression, and that education and studying is one of the strongest tools for liberation. Political education and...
Leigh Patel, Ida Cordelia Beam Visiting Scholar Lecture: Learning, Care, and World-Building in Higher Education promotional image

Leigh Patel, Ida Cordelia Beam Visiting Scholar Lecture: Learning, Care, and World-Building in Higher Education

Tuesday, March 4, 2025 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)
The UI campus community is invited to this lecture and discussion featuring Professor Leigh Patel, Ida Cordelia Beam Visiting Scholar and Professor of Educational Foundations, Organizations, & Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Patel is a transdisciplinary scholar who studies the narratives that create material realities in society. Her research focuses on the ways schooling delivers inequities and how education can be a tool for liberation. As part of her UI visit, Patel will give a...
A Conversation with Scholars At Risk promotional image

A Conversation with Scholars At Risk

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum
Join us for a public conversation for faculty, students and staff from across campus about the work of Scholars at Risk to protect and promote academic freedom worldwide. SAR staff representatives Clare Farne Robinson (Director of Advocacy Programs) and Adam Braver (Student Advocacy Seminar Coordinator and Author) will offer remarks on the current state of academic freedom globally, the evolving definition and implementation framework for academic freedom within international law and policy, and...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat

Friday, March 14, 2025 5:00pm
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025! Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26)

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5:00pm
Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding ($500 per year for 3 years) 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 explore new work and to share their own research, to organize a symposium, and to develop grant proposals. This program allows participants from across the campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a...
Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 5:00pm
Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book 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 in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three...

News

Obermann Grad Fellow Combines Biking Advocacy and Research

Mark Pooley jokes that many people think that winter bike riding is only for the “strong and the fearless.” As someone who rides his bike most days, he acknowledges that even the strong and fearless sometimes look outside on a zero-degree wind chill morning and have second thoughts about riding to work. But what the former Obermann Graduate...

A Year in the Life of the Obermann Center

In the last academic year, the Obermann Center directly served 139 faculty, staff, and graduate students as Fellows-in-Residence and Affiliated Scholars. These participants represent 46 different University of Iowa departments and units and 10 colleges. In addition, hundreds of people from across campus, the greater Iowa City area, and throughout the state attended our programs. Here is just a...
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New Film Celebrates the Humanities

"The more technologically sophisticated we are, the more deeply we need to understand one another. [We need] to teach people empathy, because empathy does not come naturally; to encourage curiosity in broad and diverse ways. And the humanities does those things," says Obermann Director Teresa Mangum in a new film, The Centrality of the Humanities, produced by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the...
Charles Darwin

Internationally Renowned Darwin Biographer to Speak

Exploring Darwin's Motives: Why did Charles Darwin, a rich and impeccably upright gentleman, go out of his way to privately develop a subversive image of human evolution in 1837-39? Why did he pursue the subject with tenacity for three decades before publishing The Descent of Man in 1871? Internationally renowned Darwin biographer James Moore will address these questions and others in his lecture,...

The Unintended Consequences of Rankings

We are a society obsessed with quantifying and ranking things. Neurosurgeons, small towns, and nasal sprays all have their own ranking lists. Someone is a winner and someone is a loser. While many of us are aware of this increased quantification and vaguely understand its potential dangers, Michael Sauder (Sociology, CLAS) is working to make the unintended consequences of this trend and fascination...

Memorializing the Cold War, One Ambiguous Site at a Time

Memorializing the Cold War One Ambiguous Site at a Time: How should the Cold War be memorialized? This question forms the backbone of the Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant project of Sarah Kanouse (Art & Art History, CLAS) and Shiloh Krupar (Geography, Georgetown University).Through their “wishful federal agency,” The National Toxic Land/Labor Conservation Service,” also known as the National...

Recent Events

Provost's Global Forum: Teaching Anne Frank - Panel Discussions promotional image

Provost's Global Forum: Teaching Anne Frank - Panel Discussions

Tuesday, March 1, 2022 9:00am to 5:00pm
University Capitol Centre
February 28 - March 2, 2022, the University of Iowa will host scholars, experts, and researchers from around the world as part of the 2022 Provost’s Global Forum, "Teaching Anne Frank." With a goal to inspire discussions of global affairs and build relationships between the university and the state of Iowa, this Provost's Global Forum brings together a multi-disciplinary panel of experts from Iowa and across Europe to highlight the educational value and continuing relevance of Anne Frank's...
WorldCanvass - Teaching Anne Frank promotional image

WorldCanvass - Teaching Anne Frank

Monday, February 28, 2022 5:30pm to 7:00pm
MERGE
Seventy-five years after the publication of The Diary of Anne Frank, historians, educators, human rights activists, and readers of all ages and nationalities continue to find beauty, humor, tragedy, and hope in the words of a young girl whose life ended in a Nazi death camp at the end of WWII.  WorldCanvass will kick off the 2022 University of Iowa Provost’s Global Forum “Teaching Anne Frank” on February 28, from 5:30-7 p.m., with an expert panel discussing Anne’s life before and during...
Provost's Global Forum: Teaching Anne Frank promotional image

Provost's Global Forum: Teaching Anne Frank

Monday, February 28, 2022 (all day)
University of Iowa Campus
Feb. 28–March 2, 2022, the University of Iowa will host scholars, experts, and researchers from around the world as part of the 2022 Provost’s Global Forum, "Teaching Anne Frank." With a goal to inspire discussions of global affairs and build relationships between the university and the state of Iowa, this Provost's Global Forum brings together a multi-disciplinary panel of experts from Iowa and across Europe to highlight the educational value and continuing relevance of Anne Frank's story...
Humanities Labs: New Formations for Graduate Education promotional image

Humanities Labs: New Formations for Graduate Education

Tuesday, February 22, 2022 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Virtual
What is a humanities lab? Imagine a problem and project-based course in American or African American Studies, arts or performance, communication studies, film, GWSS, literature, language, history, philosophy, or religious studies in which your reading and writing addressed a pressing social challenge. Imagine testing how humanists could help address that challenge working alongside a community partner. Join us as we learn about humanities lab courses across the country. Then consider applying...
Application deadline: Summer 2022 HPG Internships promotional image

Application deadline: Summer 2022 HPG Internships

Monday, February 21, 2022 5:00pm
Experiential learning is a cornerstone of the Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good program. Nine internships are available for summer 2022 for UI PhD students in the humanities or humanities-adjacent disciplines. Interns will spend two summer months working with and for a campus or community partner on a specific project or area of focus. In addition to their work on site, interns also attend weekly cohort meetings and complete assignments that provide professionalizing skills and...
Ukraine and Russia: Deciphering the Current Situation — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Ukraine and Russia: Deciphering the Current Situation — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, February 16, 2022 5:00pm to 6:00pm
Virtual
As the news cycle continues to focus on tensions at the Ukraine-Russia border, we've reached out to three people who know the region well to help us better understand current events and what has led to this situation. In this pop-up Obermann Conversation, we'll hear from: Daria Kuznetsova — A PhD student in Political Science and a native of Ukraine, Kuznetsova studies democratic transitions and the survival of democracies. For her Masters in Community and Regional Planning from ISU, she focused...