Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

The Research Development Office is hosting an in-person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, May 31, 2029 (all day)
111 Church Street

Books Ends—Obermann 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 turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

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News

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...

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...

Recent Events

Dissertation Camp promotional image

Dissertation Camp

Tuesday, May 28, 2024 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual

The 2024 dissertation writing camp runs from Tuesday, May 28 to Friday, June 7. Spaces are limited; priority will be given to doctoral students who are post-proposal, have mostly completed data collection, and are focused on writing. We meet via Zoom from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Mon-Fri). Each day begins with a short group discussion and ends with a 30-minute presentation focused on dissertation writing, but most of the time is devoted to writing. Participants set daily and weekly writing goals and...

Lecture: "John Luther Long, David Belasco, Giacomo Puccini, and Butterfly’s Journey to La Scala and the Met."

Wednesday, May 8, 2024 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Voxman Music Building

Commemorating the 120th anniversary of Madama Butterfly (premiered at La Scala on Feb. 17, 1904), Professor Barker’s Met Opera in HD talk will discuss the opera in its literary, historical, geopolitical, and musical contexts. 

Streaming of the Met performance in Sycamore theater on Saturday, May 11. 

https://www.marcustheatres.com/movies/the-metropolitan-opera-madama-butt...

Hosted by the Opera Studies Obermann Working Group

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2024) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2024)

Tuesday, May 7, 2024 5:00pm

Obermann Center Faculty Fellows (formerly Fellows-in-Residence) fully devote themselves to projects within an interdisciplinary community. The program supports artists, researchers, and scholars during periods when focus and feedback are crucial. The program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...

Obermann Center 45th Anniversary Celebration, Featuring Keynotes by Joy Connolly & Antoinette Burton promotional image

Obermann Center 45th Anniversary Celebration, Featuring Keynotes by Joy Connolly & Antoinette Burton

Monday, May 6, 2024 5:00pm
Hancher Auditorium

Please join the Vice President for Research at the Hancher Auditorium's Stanley Café at 5 p.m. on Monday, May 6 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. The event will feature guests Joy Connolly and Antoinette Burton, prestigious national leaders in the humanities and social sciences. All are invited to the reception afterward to celebrate this important anniversary and the Center’s outgoing director, Professor Teresa Mangum. 

Please RSVP to let us know...

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2024–25) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2024–25)

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 5:00pm

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 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 moment when cross...

Film History Now: A Conversation with Pardis Dabashi and Allyson Nadia Field

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Virtual

What does the practice of film history look like today? What different methods—from interdisciplinary inquiry to speculative historiography and public humanities projects—are scholars using to tell new stories about film culture? Please join us to discuss these and other questions with two highly accomplished scholars: Pardis Dabashi (Bryn Mawr College) and Allyson Nadia Field (University of Chicago). Dr. Dabashi will discuss her recently published monograph Losing the Plot: Form and Feeling in...