Upcoming Events

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Monday, June 2, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Thursday, June 5, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025 promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025

Friday, May 23, 2025 5:00pm
Virtual
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...
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 Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026)

Wednesday, October 8, 2025 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 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

David L. Gould (Headshot)_1.jpg

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

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...
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...

Recent Events

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival promotional image

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival

Sunday, April 27, 2025 (all day)
Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building
The Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival (ICDOCS) is an annual event run by students at the University of Iowa. Our mission is to engage local audiences with the exhibition of recent short films that explore the boundaries of nonfiction filmmaking. We seek innovative new works of 30 minutes or less that both complicate and expand upon conventional approaches to nonfiction and documentary.The festival runs from April 25 at 3 p.m. to April 27 at 9 p.m. with 7 different competitive...
Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival promotional image

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival

Saturday, April 26 to Sunday, April 27, 2025 (all day)
Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building
The Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival (ICDOCS) is an annual event run by students at the University of Iowa. Our mission is to engage local audiences with the exhibition of recent short films that explore the boundaries of nonfiction filmmaking. We seek innovative new works of 30 minutes or less that both complicate and expand upon conventional approaches to nonfiction and documentary.The festival runs from April 25 at 3 p.m. to April 27 at 9 p.m. with 7 different competitive...
Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival promotional image

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival

Friday, April 25 to Sunday, April 27, 2025 (all day)
Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building
The Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival (ICDOCS) is an annual event run by students at the University of Iowa. Our mission is to engage local audiences with the exhibition of recent short films that explore the boundaries of nonfiction filmmaking. We seek innovative new works of 30 minutes or less that both complicate and expand upon conventional approaches to nonfiction and documentary.The festival runs from April 25 at 3 p.m. to April 27 at 9 p.m. with 7 different competitive...
Faculty Book Proposal Workshop with Mark Simpson-Vos promotional image

Faculty Book Proposal Workshop with Mark Simpson-Vos

Friday, April 18, 2025 9:00am to 12:00pm
111 Church Street
For this workshop, 4–5 UI faculty members will submit book proposal drafts for a collaborative feedback session led by Mark Simpson-Vos, Senior Executive Editor at University of North Carolina Press. The session is designed to help authors write a compelling book proposal, with a focus on crafting a strong pitch, identifying target audiences, and outlining the project’s structure. The workshop’s goal is for participants to walk away with a strong and cohesive book proposal, increasing their...
"Beyond Crisis: Restoring the Creative Partnership between Authors and Publishers" - Lecture by Mark Simpson-Vos promotional image

"Beyond Crisis: Restoring the Creative Partnership between Authors and Publishers" - Lecture by Mark Simpson-Vos

Thursday, April 17, 2025 3:30pm to 4:30pm
111 Church Street
At this public lecture, Mark Simpson-Vos — Senior Executive Editor at University of North Carolina Press — will discuss the way commentators have since the 1970s routinely trotted out the idea that scholarly publishing is in crisis, and how the stance of publishers in particular has been to shrug off such ideas. In this moment, however, it is impossible to ignore the deep strains within the scholarly publishing ecosystem, amidst increasingly turbulent times for American higher education. Lament...
Graduate Student Session with Mark Simpson-Vos, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Graduate Student Session with Mark Simpson-Vos, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Thursday, April 17, 2025 10:00am to 11:00am
111 Church Street
This interactive talk for PhD and MFA students in the writing disciplines will outline the publishing process for first books. The session will guide graduate students through the steps of the academic publishing process, with a focus on demystifying the journey from dissertation/thesis to manuscript to published book. Key topics will include identifying the right academic publisher, understanding peer review, negotiating contracts, and building a strong proposal. Led by Mark Simpson-Vos, Senior...