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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

Health Humanities: Building the Future of Research and Teaching

Health Humanities: Building the Future of Research and Teaching, a two-day Obermann Working Symposium, promises to be a paradigm-shifting moment for the University of Iowa and a leap forward in the larger field of the health humanities. The six keynote speakers include the editors of the two forthcoming health humanities anthologies, Paul Crawford and Tess Jones, as well as the editor of a graphic...
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Inquiring About Affect - A Conversation with Naomi Greyser

How might the work of artists, scholars, and activists be more pleasurable and easeful? How might our working environments and labor conditions be more healthy? These are some of the questions this year’s Obermann Humanities Symposium, Affect & Inquiry, will address. Co-directed by Naomi Greyser (Rhetoric, CLAS), Deborah Whaley (American Studies, CLAS), and Jeffrey Bennett (Communication Studies...

2nd Iowa Humanities Festival: From Jamaica to Rome in a Day

Alta Vista, Bettendorf, Camanche, Elkader, Humboldt, Jamaica, McGregor, Persia, Rome, Zwingle—far-flung corners of the world have found their way into the very names of Iowa cities and towns. The 2014 Iowa Humanities Festival, “A World at Home | A Home in the World,” invites you to travel the world while staying right at home in the “French” city of Des Moines...
Sarah Guyer

Designing the Future for Publicly Engaged Research and Teaching in the Humanities

A recent New York Times Opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof—“Professors, We Need You!”—inspired national debate about the status of “public intellectuals.” The Obermann Center continues the conversation on March 10, 2014, with the next two speakers in our yearlong...

Andrea Charise On the Health Humanities Frontier

Using music to manage chronic pain. Training the eye to see emotional as well as physical symptoms of suffering in a gallery of portraits. Absorbing a sense of well-being through encounters with the written word. Bringing together the arts, humanities, and health sciences offers incalculable benefits. This April, the Obermann Center will offer a...

Comics in the Library, Museum and Classroom - Rachel Williams and Corey Creekmur Make a Case for Comics in Academia

Comics: Their Time Has Come — Three years ago, Corey Creekmur (Cinema & Comparative Literature and English, CLAS) and Rachel Williams (Art & Art History and GWSS, CLAS) and their colleague Ana Merino (Spanish & Portuguese, CLAS) co-directed a highly successful Obermann Humanities Symposium, "Comics, Creativity, and Culture." The three-day event fostered dynamic exchanges between notable creators and...

Recent Events

Judaism in the Diary of Anne Frank: A Discussion promotional image

Judaism in the Diary of Anne Frank: A Discussion

Monday, April 11, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

As we await the arrival of the Anne Frank Tree, which will be planted on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on April 29, 2022, we encourage people of all ages to read the book that is at the heart of this event. Better yet—read it in community!

To provide context to your reading, we’re offering three in-person discussions at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St., Iowa City). All of the discussions are free and open to the general public. 

In this second session, Josh Hare, program...

Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space promotional image

Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space

Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:30am to 12:15pm
Macbride Hall

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is a scientist and author. An adjunct assistant professor at Rice University, she studies behavioral manipulation of animal hosts by their parasites. She has worked on systems that infect the brains of fish, and wasps that control the behavior of other wasps before eating them. Dr. Weinersmith and her partner, the cartoonist Zach Weinersmith, coauthored the New York Times bestselling book Soonish.

This talk is part of the 2022 Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest. All events...

Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University promotional image

Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University

Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:45am to 11:30am
Macbride Hall

Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and a visiting research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. He uses experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and computational biology to better understand the underlying causes and consequences of disease. He is a recipient of the UNCF-Merck Award, the Broad Institute Diversity Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

This talk is...

Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? Dr. Shamar Chin promotional image

Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? Dr. Shamar Chin

Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:00am to 10:45am
Macbride Hall

Dr. Shamar Chin is Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Iowa. Dr. Chin is a micropaleontologist, specializing in nannofossils, which she uses to understand climatological and ecological histories.

This talk is part of the 2022 Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest. All events are free and open to the public.

Picture a Scientist (Free Movie Screening at FilmScene) promotional image

Picture a Scientist (Free Movie Screening at FilmScene)

Friday, April 8, 2022 7:30pm to 10:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Picture a Scientist is a documentary that chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. Biologist Nancy Hopkins, chemist Raychelle Burks, and geologist Jane Willenbring lead viewers on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, ranging from brutal harassment to years of subtle slights. Along the way, from cramped laboratories to spectacular field stations, we encounter scientific luminaries - including social scientists...

C. Brandon Ogbunu (Yale University). The New Tangled Bank: How Ecologies and Interactions Drive Evolution, from Word Games to Proteins. promotional image

C. Brandon Ogbunu (Yale University). The New Tangled Bank: How Ecologies and Interactions Drive Evolution, from Word Games to Proteins.

Friday, April 8, 2022 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and a visiting research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. He uses experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and computational biology to better understand the underlying causes and consequences of disease. He is a recipient of the UNCF-Merck, the Broad Institute Diversity Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

This talk is part of...