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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

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...

Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure promotional image

Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure

Friday, February 11, 2022 3:00pm to 4:15pm
Virtual

Join us for a virtual book talk from Hatim El-Hibri, author of Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure.

El-Hibri is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University. His research focuses on global and transnational media studies, visual culture studies, Lebanon and the Middle East, urban studies, television studies, and media theory and history.

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT I) promotional image

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT: Anne Frank (PT I)

Wednesday, February 9, 2022 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

The University of Iowa Pentacrest Museums explores current exhibition Let Me Be Myself: The Life Story of Anne Frank through the Exhibition Spotlight program series in a special two-part virtual panel event. Pentacrest Museums Director of Education & Engagement, Carolina Kaufman will moderate discussion with panelists on a variety of related topics to share the story and legacy of Anne Frank and her impact on society. These sessions will illuminate how Frank's story has inspired new approaches...

What Do We Mean by Research Now? — Collaborative Approaches to Understanding Memory and Minds promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now? — Collaborative Approaches to Understanding Memory and Minds

Monday, February 7, 2022 11:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

How do scientists gather and sustain teams to understand infinitely complex mysteries—in this case, memory and the mind? And how are our departments, colleges, and disciplinary organizations adapting to the need for such deeply interdisciplinary teams? Join us on February 7, 2022, as a group of researchers from neuroscience, microbiology, and internal medicine share their process, challenges, and suggestions for the future of research.

Panelists:

Ted Abel, Professor, Chair, and DEO of...