Upcoming Events
Wide Lens: LISTENING
Thursday, May 8, 2025 5:30pm
In a world full of noise, we often try to listen—to conversations with colleagues and family, to music in our headphones, to videos blasting from our smartphones. We hear all these things daily, but what does it mean to truly listen? In what sense do devices also listen to us? What is the role of silence in listening? How has listening changed over time? Can political tensions be solved through listening? How is listening both an art and a science?This Wide Lens event brings together researchers...
Si No Sanas Hoy, Sanarás Mañana
Friday, May 9, 2025 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Si No Sanas Hoy, Sanarás Mañana, a group exhibition whose title translates to “If you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow.” This exhibition brings together Iowa-based creatives of Latin American descent in a dialogue centered around healing—whether physical, emotional, or symbolic. Participating artists include members of the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and visual activists from Des Moines.
Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat
Monday, May 12 to Friday, May 16, 2025 (all day)
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 Writing Collective, Summer 2025
Friday, May 23, 2025 5:00pm
This program offers companionship and accountability to University of Iowa artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of academic writing project (ex. academic articles/essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, nonfiction) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.In Summer 2025, two write-on-site groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines
Upcoming Application Deadlines
News
Dave Gould Is First Obermann Public Scholar
Though we tend to associate scholarship with the work of campus faculty members, knowledge creation also has strong roots in our communities. The Obermann Center is piloting a Public Scholar program designed to enhance research on campus through partnerships that engage University of Iowa researchers with innovators outside the University. As Obermann...
Herman Gray Visit Stems from Obermann Cmiel Semester
Herman S. Gray, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will give a public lecture on October 18, 2013, “On Race, Representation, and Resonance,” in Becker Auditorium, Room 101, at 4:00 pm. His lecture engages with the way scholars of television and race often take representation as the site of subject/ion and visibility as the object of cultural politics. Gray asks if...
Health Humanities Planning Sessions
We will host two informal planning sessions for University of Iowa faculty and staff who are interested in next April's Health Humanities Working Symposium. (We are having two meetings in order to accommodate schedules.) If you would like to learn more, to participate in the event, or to meet colleagues working across these domains—from medical anthropologists and historians to poets writing about...
Translating Ixtlilxochitl’s Thirteenth Relation
At the death of an Aztec king, two brothers contest their father’s throne. A civil war ensues and ends with the kingdom divided in two. A number of years later, a Spanish conquistador named Cortés arrives in the area and one brother sends him an offer: I’ll help you if you help me. With the Spaniard’s assistance, the one brother is deposed, while the other not only takes the throne but fights...
Designing the Future
As changes in technology, population, climate, the economy, the organization of knowledge, and other systems gather speed, the need to predict and even to design the future accelerates as does the need to re-envision STEM as STEAM (sciences, technology, engineering, arts-humanities, and medicine). Through 2013-2014, a series of "futurists"—from the arts...
Exuberant Politics: Fall 2013
Exuberant Politics is a yearlong programming initiative examining recent intersections of art and activism around the world. Organized by Exubernaut Collective, a group of faculty, graduate students, and community members, the series enjoys sponsorship from across community and campus, including the Obermann Center.Where have we experienced exuberance in protest and affinity? Grassroots political...
