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

Schoenberg Self Portrait

The Allure of Concision — Matthew Arndt’s Fascination with Schoenberg’s Shortest Works

“Concise!” In 1909, the composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote to a friend, “My music must be short. Concise! In two notes, not built, but ‘expressed.’ And the result is, I hope, without stylized and sterilized drawn-out sentiment.” This call to simplification marked the beginning of a two-year period of radically unconventional music, even compared with his earlier nontonal music. This period...
Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson challenges higher education to consider--The Way We Perform Now

At the 2014 Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, Shannon Jackson, Goldman Chair in the Arts and Humanities at the University of California-Berkeley, stole a very impressive show as she previewed the book she is writing with a Guggenheim fellowship: The Way We Perform Now. We are delighted that Jackson is coming to the UI for a public talk on Wednesday, March 24 from 3:30-5:00 at the...

Smoke-Screen: Dance Performance Explore Themes of the Anthropocene

Smoke-Screen Debuts as Finale of Anthropocene Symposium Jennifer Kayle (Dance, CLAS; pictured left) has spent the past few months immersed in books like Diane Ackerman’s The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, as well as works about how complex science can be effectively communicated to a broader public. This research has been...
A chemical synapse releasing neurotransmitters.

On the Trail of Parkinson’s — Jon Doorn Seeks Clues to Stop Neurodegenerative Disease

The second most common neurodegenerative disease is Parkinson’s Disease (PD). It affects more than 1 million Americans and 10 million people worldwide. The cause of this prevalent disease remains largely unknown. Genetics play a role but cannot account for all cases. While age is one contributor, it isn’t clear whether Parkinson’s comes with age or...
HWW logo

UI Faculty and Grad Students Selected for Humanities Without Walls Opportunities

The Obermann Center is delighted to be a member of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Without Walls consortium, led by the University of Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Already, our graduate students and faculty are benefiting from this innovative partnership. Note: A second round of applications will be invited soon for summer 2015 seed grants. In fall 2015, we...
Michael Hill, photo by The HawkEye

Follow the children: Michael Hill views the adolescent character as a weathervane

In a 1949 poem, Gwendolyn Brooks asked, “What shall I give my children? . . . / Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land . . . ” The question is central to Michael Hill’s new book, A Little Child Shall Lead Them: Adolescence in African American Novels, 1941-2008.Hill, a University of Iowa professor of English and African American Studies and Fall 2014 Obermann Fellow in Residence, is curious...

Recent Events

What Can Museums Become, Relationality and Performance: A Critical Genealogy promotional image

What Can Museums Become, Relationality and Performance: A Critical Genealogy

Friday, March 6, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
University of Iowa Main Library

The 2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium, "What Can Museums Become?", will bring together a distinguished group of museum directors, curators, educators and artists who will reflect on the transformative work that museums perform in the twenty-first century.

Friday’s Keynote lecture: “Relationality and Performance: A Critical Genealogy” will be delivered by Amelia Jones, a feminist curator who is also the Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Research at the Roski School of Art and Design at...

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Friday, March 6 to Monday, March 9, 2020 (all day)

Museums have never been mere containers for objects, nor should they be. How might we draw strength from existing institutions to enable vibrant futures? How can we expand the communities who feel a sense of belonging within and around museums? What must we confront and transform to make this possible? Join the artists, curators, historians, educators, and thinkers who are asking, "What Can Museums Become?"

Keynote speakers include Johanna Burton, Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at...

What Can Museums Become: "Museum: Space, Trace, or Place?" promotional image

What Can Museums Become: "Museum: Space, Trace, or Place?"

Thursday, March 5, 2020 4:10pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

The 2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium, "What Can Museums Become?", will bring together a distinguished group of museum directors, curators, educators and artists who will reflect on the transformative work that museums perform in the twenty-first century.

The first keynote speaker will be Johanna Burton, whose expertise in performance studies has inflected her work as a curator, educator, scholar, and now as the Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University—one of the...

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

What Can Museums Become? —2020 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Thursday, March 5 to Monday, March 9, 2020 (all day)

Museums have never been mere containers for objects, nor should they be. How might we draw strength from existing institutions to enable vibrant futures? How can we expand the communities who feel a sense of belonging within and around museums? What must we confront and transform to make this possible? Join the artists, curators, historians, educators, and thinkers who are asking, "What Can Museums Become?"

Keynote speakers include Johanna Burton, Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at...

Historically Speaking: History PhDs Tell Stories of Working Outside the Academy

Monday, February 24, 2020 3:30pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Join us on Monday, February 24 from 3:30pm to 5:30PM at the Iowa City Public Library meeting rooms for a panel and small group discussion by history PhD alumni, who will discuss their pathways to career diversity: 

Karen Christianson Director, Department of Public Engagement, Newberry Library Sylvea Hollis Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, National Park Service Eric Zimmer Historian, Vantage Point Historical Services

This event is part of Humanities for the Public Good, an Andrew W...

ICE Enforcement: Impacts on Community Health and Well-Being — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

ICE Enforcement: Impacts on Community Health and Well-Being — An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, February 4, 2020 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

With attention drawn to events at the border, it can be easy to overlook the population of immigrants who live in fear of being deported or having family members deported. The effects of raids and other maneuvers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have deep impact on the overall health and well-being of Latino/a/x communities here in Iowa and across the country. The possibility of raids and deportation cause anxiety and depression, which affect the workplace and schools, as well as the...