Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Thursday, April 1, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This new Obermann Center program offers modest yet swift support for those portions of research and creative endeavors by UI scholars that are important toward advancing a project but do not have enough funding from other sources. We will grant 10 awards of $500 or less per academic year. Note that funds need to be spent by June 30 of each year.

Eligibility: Open to all University of Iowa faculty and staff researchers who have not received a SIP award in the past academic year.

Application...

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...

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News

2015 Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows Selected

The following students have been selected for the 2015 Obermann Graduate Institute. As Obermann Graduate Fellows, they will participate in a one-week intensive institute exploring how to combine public engagement with their research and teaching. The Institute, now in its ninth year, is co-directed by Barbara Eckstein (English, CLAS) and Craig Just (Civil and Environmental Engineering), with...

Arts, Education, and Social Justice: Meet Informatics

The word “informatics” summons the 1999 film “The Matrix” — a terrifying world of streaming numbers (and Keanu Reeves). In the real world, patterns in a sea of data can become life rafts, for example, to individuals suffering from disease or activists tracking pollution. Designing ways for humans to interact effectively with computers and information is the goal of researchers in the growing area of computer science sometimes called human-computer interaction or HCI.
Performance from the Dance.Draw series at UNC-Charlotte, by Rob Singh-Latulipe.

Designing the Digital Future: Highlighting Informatics Work in the Arts and Humanities

Search “informatics” on Wikipedia and you’ll get a hint of the very wide swath that this relatively new field has already cut: bioinformatics, irrigation informatics, legal informatics, music informatics, cheminformatics, and disease informatics are just a few of its subfields. An idea that has been around for barely a half century...
2014 Imagining America PAGE Fellows

Reflections on Imagining America from UI’s PAGE Fellows

Moving the Middle — Reflections on Imagining America’s national conference by Heather Draxl: The theme of this year’s Imagining America conference, held in Atlanta, Georgia, was “Organizing. Culture. Change.” Those three words were intended to “represent concentrations of energy and activity across higher education and within the IA consortium” and played a role in one of the conference’s primary...
Crescendo poster

Obermann-Incubated Project Comes to a Crescendo

Masks give us permission to explore new ideas or to more bravely enact ways of being that we don’t usually give ourselves permission to pursue. They invite playfulness, humor, parody, and even a bit of mischief. Think Halloween costumes and masquerade balls. All of the qualities that masks allow and invite also make them a clever tool for exploring social issues, which is the aim of a new UI...
Bruce Gronbeck

Remembering Longtime Obermann Scholar Bruce Gronbeck

In January 1986, just days before the nation and the University of Iowa were scheduled to celebrate Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday for the first time, the Obermann Center was asked if we could “put together something” as part of the University’s observance. I was panicked, but then remembered that Bruce Gronbeck, a new guy at the Obermann Center, had been talking at...

Recent Events

Racism and Education: A Discussion promotional image

Racism and Education: A Discussion

Monday, February 12, 2024 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Virtual

Join us for a discussion on teaching about race and racism amidst current events.

Conflict and Collaboration: Trauma-Informed Responses to Teaching Challenges promotional image

Conflict and Collaboration: Trauma-Informed Responses to Teaching Challenges

Friday, January 26, 2024 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Virtual

Bridget McCarthy from the Association of Mental Health Coordinators (AMHC) will give a presentation, which will be followed by a Q&A regarding what trauma-informed support in the classroom looks like and how to implement it in our own work. While the presentation will be geared towards the teaching of performance, anyone responsible for students in a classroom can benefit from this knowledge.

Bridget McCarthy is an artist, advocate, and a mental health coordinator for theater, TV and Film. She...

Opera Studies Forum Lecture with Anna Barker promotional image

Opera Studies Forum Lecture with Anna Barker

Wednesday, January 24, 2024 5:30pm to 6:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Dr. Anna Barker will give a lecture on the opera Carmen, which will be streamed in HD in cinemas on Saturday, Jan. 27.

Anna Barker received her PhD in Comparative Literature in 2002 with a dissertation in translation studies. At the University of Iowa, she has taught courses in the English Department, in Comparative Literature, in Russian Literature, and in the Honors Program. Her areas of interest include 19th-century Russian and European literature, Russian cultural history, 19th century...

Out of the Archive Film Series: Oscar Micheaux's 'Body and Soul' with Live Musical Accompaniment promotional image

Out of the Archive Film Series: Oscar Micheaux's 'Body and Soul' with Live Musical Accompaniment

Thursday, January 18, 2024 6:15pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Please join us at FilmScene for the continuation of "Out of the Archive: Envisioning Blackness," a monthly screening and discussion series that celebrates the vibrant  tradition of Black cinema by featuring rarely screened, newly restored, and archivally-engaged films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0). Join us before each screening for a free dinner reception catered by local restaurants, and stay after each film for post-screening conversations...

Canceled
Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing, Session II: Working with Graduate Students promotional image

Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing, Session II: Working with Graduate Students

Wednesday, January 10, 2024 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Virtual

Teaching Data Visualization and Communication: Do you struggle to teach your students how to best graph and visualize their data and then present their data? Join us for a one-hour workshop focused on helping students grasp principles of graphic design, data visualization (graphing and figure preparation), and effective slides for polished, persuasive presentations. After attending this workshop, you will have a clear set of expectations to share with your students on what makes for effective...

Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing I: Making Writing Assignments Creative Across the Disciplines promotional image

Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing I: Making Writing Assignments Creative Across the Disciplines

Wednesday, January 10, 2024 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

Tired of the "research paper" assignment? Bored reading reflection papers? Interested in using writing to promote student learning but not sure how to make it fun? Join us for a lively discussion of how to make writing assignments more creative and engaging. See examples of innovative assignments from instructors across campus, hear from a panel of faculty who have redesigned their approaches, and workshop ideas to use in your own courses.

This is the first of two sessions offered by the Instit...