Upcoming Events

Graduate Student Writing Group Session & Social promotional image

Graduate Student Writing Group Session & Social

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 11:00am to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, in collaboration with Grad Success & Belonging, is hosting a writing group followed by a social for Graduate & Professional Student Appreciation Week. This writing group session facilitated by two grad ambassadors will offer community and accountability to Iowa's graduate and professional students working on any kind of academic writing project (academic articles/essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, etc.). The session...
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 promotional image

Annual Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day 2025

Saturday, April 12, 2025 (all day)
MacLean Hall
In honor of Sonia Kovalevsky, the Department of Mathematics at the University of Iowa organizes Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day yearly with the goal to inspire young women interested in math and show them that math is like solving a puzzle. Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day is an opportunity for young women to engage in a day of networking, mentoring, and fun! The daylong program includes workshops, interactive talks, math related games and panels of professionals with...
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

Raquel Baker and Ted Gutsche

Raquel Baker (English, CLAS) and Ted Gutsche (Journalism and Mass Communication, CLAS) met via the Obermann Graduate Institute. Today, the two PhD candidates are using their mutual interests in civic engagement and social justice to create a General Education Literature course that takes students into the local community to find "concealed stories" and share them with a broader audience. One of the...

HASTAC Scholars Organize THATCamp Iowa City

From Friday, March 31 to Sunday, April 1, THATCamp Iowa City took place in The University of Iowa Main Library. THATCamp (The Humanities And Technology Camp) was organized by UI HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) scholars Melody Dworak (MLIS candidate, Graduate College) and Katherine F. Montgomery (English PhD candidate, CLAS). Following an “unconference”...

stef shuster: Transgender Activist, Academic Pioneer

stef shuster recalls the frustration experienced when filling out the Institutional Review Board (IRB) application to conduct graduate research.“It was very formulaic, and so many of the questions were constructed in a binary way,” says the 29-year-old University of Iowa doctoral student in sociology who is conducting research on transgender communities and identities—and whose name is...

Lobbying for the Humanities

As director of the Obermann Center, I often represent the University of Iowa at national meetings. In March, I headed to Washington, D.C. to the annual meeting National Humanities Alliance (NHA) and its Annual Advocacy Day along with Colin Gordon, UI professor of history, and Derek Willard, Special Assistant to the President and Associate VP for Research in the UI Office of Governmental Relations...

Kathleen Diffley

What would you learn about the current war in Afghanistan if you were to take as your sources several current magazines, say People, The New Yorker, and Newsweek? The story that would come into focus from such disparate sources may not offer a complete timeline of events, but it would provide a sense of what the people reading those publications cared about: a soldier’s homecoming, an intimate...

Graduate Institute Fellows Present at Jakobsen Conference

The culmination of each year's Graduate Institute is for participants to create a project that combines some aspect of their research and/or teaching with a community-based issue or organization. This year's Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows will present their projects at this year's Jakobsen Graduate Conference on March 24 from noon to 5:00 at the IMU. The Graduate Fellows' projects include a...

Recent Events

Latina/o/x Studies Today — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Latina/o/x Studies Today — An Obermann Conversation

Friday, July 20, 2018 3:00pm to 4:00pm
MERGE
Theorists Vargas, Mirabal, and La Fountain-Stokes (2017) describe Latina/o/x Studies as “an amalgamation of multiple disciplines, theories, and methods” that “has generated an expansive, innovative, and ever-evolving framework to understand the experiences of persons of Latin American and Caribbean descent in the United States as well as broader sociohistorical, political, and cultural processes.” The speakers below, all of whom are in town participating in the weeklong Iowa Workshop in Latina/o...
Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered—2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered—2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Wednesday, April 4, 2018 to Saturday, April 6, 2019 (all day)
Disability is a universal human experience. Like gender, race, class, and sexuality, disability affects everyone in multiple ways, shaping and informing our notions of normality, family, community, fitness, and worth. Disability Studies, one of the fastest growing interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences and health sciences, examines abilities in the context of societies and cultures as they change over time. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed)...
Publicizing Events: An Obermann Get It Done! Workshop promotional image

Publicizing Events: An Obermann Get It Done! Workshop

Tuesday, October 3, 2017 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
Get It Done is a new BYO Brown Bag Lunch series about getting work done efficiently and with style. Bring your lunch and join the fun! Are you bringing a visiting lecturer to campus year, planning a symposium, or organizing an exhibit? Whether your event is one-hour long or three days, you are probably hoping for an audience. Jennifer New, who heads up Obermann's communications team, will share strategies for publicizing events on campus and in the community. Learn about publicity calendars...