Upcoming Events

Bring the Noise: Understanding Estrogen Sensitivity in Frogs  promotional image

Bring the Noise: Understanding Estrogen Sensitivity in Frogs

Friday, April 4, 2025 4:30pm
Biology Building East
Seminar talk by Professor Tyrone Hayes, Judy Chandler Webb Distinguished Chair for Innovative Teaching and Research and a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley
Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs promotional image

Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs

Friday, April 11, 2025 12:00pm to 1:30pm
111 Church Street
Join the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Graduate College for lunch and an introduction to pitching your research to The Conversation US with Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Associate Vice President for Research.  The Conversation is an independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of academic experts for the public good. With a monthly readership of 20 million, The Conversation expertly shares a scholar’s expertise far...

Annual Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day 2025

Saturday, April 12, 2025 (all day)
MacLean Hall
Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day 2025 is an opportunity for young women to engage in a day of networking, mentoring, and fun!
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...
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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...

News

Lunchtime Lecture Series Focuses on Public Humanities in Contemporary Culture

PDH4L, or Public Digital Humanities for Lunch, is a new series sponsored by the Digital Studio for the Public Humanities to explore how digital technology is changing humanities, and explores some of the promises, challenges and surprises of digital learning. The talks are all in Room 3052 of the Main Library.Two talks are forthcoming in November. On November 15, UI HASTAC Scholar Audrey Altman...

Barbara Eckstein

Barbara Eckstein is a Fall 2012 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and a University of Iowa professor of English. She is also on the faculty of the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) 
and is affiliated with International Programs. She’s previously served as Associate Provost for Academic Administration. Currently, she is in the early phases of an extensive study of the...
old map of world

"Circulating Culture" Working Group Hosts UMass-Amherst Scholar Laura Doyle

The Obermann Center “Circulating Cultures” Working Group will host the upcoming visit by Laura Doyle, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Doyle, who specializes in questions of transnationalism, modernity, and empire in literary studies, will give a public lecture, “Reading Otherwise: Interdisciplinarity, History, and the Dialectics of Culture,” on Thursday, October...

Genetics - From Frankenstein to the Future

"The era of personalized genomic medicine is fast approaching,” says Richard Smith, Professor of Otolaryngology, Pediatrics, Molecular Physiology, and Biophysics. “Clinicians will provide health care tailored to each person’s genome to inform choices about medications, disease and disease prevention, and surgical risks.” Smith, who is the Co-Director of the University of Iowa Institute of Human...

The Latino Midwest

Latino culture has been helping shape the United States for hundreds of years, even before the U.S. was a country. Though the Latino population in the Midwest is small compared to other areas of the country, it continues to grow, infusing Latino art, literature, and music into the culture of the heartland.The Latino Midwest, the 2012-13 University of Iowa Obermann-International Programs Humanities...

Migration Letters

Alejandro García-Lemos first came to the U.S. from his home in Colombia in order to attend graduate school in 1997. The painter, who now works as an interpreter for immigrants in hospitals and at the courthouse in Columbia, South Carolina, had visited the U.S. many times before finally decided to stay. "You meet someone, life changes," he says with a small laugh. The process of staying has hardly...

Recent Events

Out in the Field: Finding Wonder under the Water, in the Ground, and on the Waves — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Out in the Field: Finding Wonder under the Water, in the Ground, and on the Waves — An Obermann Conversation

Monday, November 16, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual
Join us for another virtual Obermann Conversation! Three researchers whose work takes them into the field reflect on the experience of being far removed from screens, phones, and what many of us associate with everyday work. George Peterson, the Director of Dive Programs at the Monterey Bay Sea Aquarium, shares his love of scuba and the discoveries he makes under the world's oceans as a way to provoke wonder in others and spur them toward conservation. Cynthia Chou, UI professor of Anthropology...
Abortion Care in America promotional image

Abortion Care in America

Thursday, November 12, 2020 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Virtual
What: Abortion Care in America When: Thursday, November 12th, 4:30 pm Central   Where: Webinar registration link: https://uiowa.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WKYdydtJQ-GzkzUhFgYb-g About the talk: Professor Carole Joffe, sociologist and professor in the Ansirh  (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) program at UCSF and emerita from the University of California, Davis will join Lina-Maria Murillo, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and History at UI, and...
Get It Done: Working with Hancher in Spring 2021 promotional image

Get It Done: Working with Hancher in Spring 2021

Monday, November 9, 2020 12:30pm
Virtual
If you've ever passed by Hancher and felt a pang of desire to be part of a performance, you're not alone! We have asked our friends at this premier performing arts center to share their spring 2021 programming and to explain how you can continue to connect with arts programming at Hancher virtually—especially for teaching purposes.  On Monday, November 9, from 12:30-1:30 p.m., Hancher's programming and education staff—Paul Brohan, Micah Ariel James, and Chuy Renteria—will give a snapshot of...
Little Resurrections: Laboring to Find Wonder in Our Work — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Little Resurrections: Laboring to Find Wonder in Our Work — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, October 28, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual
Join a minister, a dancer, and a religious anthropologist for a conversation about social justice, the body's awe-inspiring movement, and the tension between the mundane and profound qualities of 21st-century labor.   The past few months have shone an intense light on the demands of different forms of work. Americans are picking lettuce in the midst of nearby forest fires, chasing kindergartners while on Zoom work calls, and caring for COVID patients. Workers deemed "essential" are treated as...
Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice promotional image

Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Wednesday, October 14 to Saturday, October 31, 2020 (all day)
Virtual
Starting on October 4th and continuing through the month, Iowa Arts is sponsoring a series of events that bring arts and humanities together to explore a range of timely issues. The initiative, called “Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice,” includes music and theatre productions framed by discussions to place them in a social context. It also features conversations with distinguished faculty and guests about how the arts and humanities can inform medical practice and bring attention to complex...
Obermann Around the Table: Listening to the Past, Sharing Thoughts on the Present, Imagining a More Just Future promotional image

Obermann Around the Table: Listening to the Past, Sharing Thoughts on the Present, Imagining a More Just Future

Sunday, October 11, 2020 4:00pm
Virtual
The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is launching a new series entitled Obermann Around the Table--in honor of much missed in person conversations in our library. Our hope is that the series will provide a welcoming, nonjudgmental space in which colleagues, neighbors, and new friends can address difficult subjects that impact our communities and reflect on ways to move toward more just and generous communities. In the first event of the series, we will reflect on the theme Finding Your...