Upcoming Events

Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom promotional image

Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom

Thursday, April 3, 2025 4:00pm
Jefferson Building
a Faculty First Responders Workshop sponsored by POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry At a time when academics are finding their work hyper-surveilled, banned from funding, or even scrubbed by AI, how can we vibrantly sustain our research, writing, and creative practice? In this Faculty First Responders workshop, participants will learn concrete steps to support freedom of inquiry for themselves and others. Topics include digital security measures, reducing risk of extremist attacks...
The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore promotional image

The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore

Thursday, April 3, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Come to Prairie Lights Books for a special Darwin Day reading by Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic. Published in 2023 by local publisher Ice Cube Press and named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress, The Swine Republic provides extensive research and reportage on the truth behind Iowa's infamously poor water quality, which you "...won't get ... from Iowa’s agricultural and political leaders." (icecubepress.com) Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature...
Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories promotional image

Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories

Friday, April 4, 2025 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual
Discover how Anne Frank’s story continues to shape conversations on empathy, education, and human rights in a compelling webinar featuring scholars from across the U.S. Join the University  of Iowa (UI) Anne Frank Initiative, an International Programs affinity group, on Friday, April 4, 2025, at 10 a.m. (CDT) as they host an insightful and engaging webinar featuring several esteemed authors from the groundbreaking book, Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories (Routledge, 2025). Hear...
Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference promotional image

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference

Friday, April 4, 2025 12:00pm to 5:00pm
Schaeffer Hall
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

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...
Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026)

Friday, October 24, 2025 11:59pm
111 Church Street
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2026 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...

News

Nouveau recueil d’ostéologie et de myologie : dessiné d’après nature / par Jacques Gamelin

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...
Just Strike by Josh MacPhee

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...

Obermann Afternoons Kicks Off with Talk on Intergenre Crossing

Building on the Obermann Center’s tradition of nurturing interdisciplinary scholarship, the Intergenre Explorations Working Group has brought together faculty engaged in intergenre work. Rather than (or in addition to) crossing disciplines, intergenre work crosses from one mode of research or presentation to another. Synthesizing scholarly and creative modalities, these crossings entail palpable...

Obermann Director Named to National Humanities Alliance Board of Directors

The Obermann Center is pleased to announce that Director Teresa Mangum has been invited to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Humanities Alliance. For over 30 years, the NHA has been the nation’s leading public policy and advocacy organization for the academic and public humanities. This non-partisan advocacy coalition works to advance humanities education and research, preserve...

Recent Events

Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered—2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered—2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Wednesday, April 4, 2018 to Saturday, April 6, 2019 (all day)
Disability is a universal human experience. Like gender, race, class, and sexuality, disability affects everyone in multiple ways, shaping and informing our notions of normality, family, community, fitness, and worth. Disability Studies, one of the fastest growing interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences and health sciences, examines abilities in the context of societies and cultures as they change over time. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed)...
Publicizing Events: An Obermann Get It Done! Workshop promotional image

Publicizing Events: An Obermann Get It Done! Workshop

Tuesday, October 3, 2017 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
Get It Done is a new BYO Brown Bag Lunch series about getting work done efficiently and with style. Bring your lunch and join the fun! Are you bringing a visiting lecturer to campus year, planning a symposium, or organizing an exhibit? Whether your event is one-hour long or three days, you are probably hoping for an audience. Jennifer New, who heads up Obermann's communications team, will share strategies for publicizing events on campus and in the community. Learn about publicity calendars...