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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Summer 2026 Obermann Writing Collective promotional image

Application Deadline: Summer 2026 Obermann Writing Collective

Friday, May 22, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This program offers accountability to artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of writing project (articles, essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, etc.) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.Each group meets once a week for 1.5 hours. Weekly writing sessions include brief check-ins, goal setting, and sustained writing time. All groups are open to everyone in the University of Iowa...

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

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...

Teaching the Latino Midwest

The culture and history of Latinos in the Midwest is an increasingly significant topic for college courses in Latino/a Studies. Numbers alone indicate that this regional emphasis is critical. Between 2000 and 2010, the Latino population increased by 44% across the country and by more than 73% in many Midwestern states. Yet, there is no teachable anthology for undergraduate classes.Claire Fox...

Interdisciplinary Research Grant Groups in Residence for July

Three groups of scholars are currently in residence at the Obermann Center throughout July as part of the Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG). These grants foster collaborative scholarship by offering recipients with intensive time, as well as space, in which to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. Past IDRG recipients have created a music therapy app...

Rising Waters, Rapid Changes

The first-ever University of Iowa graduate seminar in public history was offered this spring semester. The class’ end result, an exhibition and oral history about the flood of 2008, “Rising Waters, Rapid Changes," will be on display starting May 4 in the window of Hands Jewelers. The project is co-sponsored by the Obermann Center. Last year, graduate students in history petitioned the department for more offerings in the growing field of public history. Professor Jackie Rand (History, CLAS), who has worked at the Smithsonian Institution and served as a consultant to the Newberry Library in conjunction with her scholarship on the history of Native North America, state Indian policy, and law, decided to teach the class not only because of the students’ interests but her own growing commitment to public history.

Recent Events

Out of the Archive Film Series: Kasi Lemmons' EVE'S BAYOU: Director's Cut (1997) promotional image

Out of the Archive Film Series: Kasi Lemmons' EVE'S BAYOU: Director's Cut (1997)

Tuesday, September 5, 2023 6:30pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This fall, the Out of the Archive screening and discussion series continues at FilmScene! This year’s theme is “Envisioning Blackness,” and the series will showcase the vibrant, multifaceted tradition of Black cinema by presenting rarely screened and/or recently restored films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0). The majority of the screenings will include food and drink receptions and post-screening discussions with UI community members as well as...

Reception for Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Saturday, September 2, 2023 4:00pm
Theatre Building

Reception for Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Come meet Dr. T! The reception will be the final event in Dr. T’s visit. Folks are encouraged to come ask questions and share the overlap in their own work with issues of self-actualization, self-determination, and artistry. In other words, time to network!

Refreshments will be available.

Lecture by Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Tawnya Pettiford-Wates promotional image

Lecture by Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Thursday, August 31, 2023 7:00pm
Theatre Building

The Department of Theatre Arts hosts Ida Beam Distinguished Professor Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, giving her lecture titled “From Shakespeare to Shange.” 

Every artist must question who they are. But for an artist in the performing arts, especially for an artist of color, that question cannot be ignored—not by the student artist, the professional artist or the teachers and professors that teach them, mentor them and ultimately evaluate them. This lecture draws from Tawnya Pettiford-Wates’...

Obermann/OVPR Book Ends Information Session promotional image

Obermann/OVPR Book Ends Information Session

Thursday, August 31, 2023 9:00am to 9:30am
Virtual

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends—an 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. Read more about the program.

Interested applicants are invited to learn more about the...

Out of the Archive Film Series: Cauleen Smith's DRYLONGSO (1998) promotional image

Out of the Archive Film Series: Cauleen Smith's DRYLONGSO (1998)

Tuesday, August 22, 2023 7:00pm to 9:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This fall, the Out of the Archive screening and discussion series continues at FilmScene! This year’s theme is “Envisioning Blackness,” and the series will showcase the vibrant, multifaceted tradition of Black cinema by presenting rarely screened and/or recently restored films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0).

The opening film for the 2023-24 series is Cauleen Smith’s debut feature film Drylongso (1988, 86 mins). A lost treasure of 1990s DIY...

From Courses to Curricula: Departmental Approaches to Relevant Writing Instruction. A talk by Pamela Flash promotional image

From Courses to Curricula: Departmental Approaches to Relevant Writing Instruction. A talk by Pamela Flash

Tuesday, August 15, 2023 11:30am to 12:30pm
Seamans Center

In this talk, Pamela Flash (University of Minnesota) describes what can happen when faculty colleagues within departments talk candidly about what they see (and hope to see) in student writing. Her work with scores of undergraduate departments reveals that conflicting conceptions of “writing,” coupled with a lack of awareness about where and how writing is being addressed within departmental curricula, can exhaust individual course instructors and impede students’ ability to develop as...