Upcoming Events

Book Matters: Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch promotional image

Book Matters: Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal in conversation with Elana Buch

Tuesday, February 25, 2025 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Prairie Lights Books
Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate recent works from Brady G’sell and Meena Khandelwal, faculty in the University of Iowa Department of Anthropology and the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program. After the reading, Elana Buch, associate professor of anthropology, will join G’sell and Khandelwal for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Light refreshments will follow.
Radical Hope: Cultural Workers and Community Leaders in Conversation promotional image

Radical Hope: Cultural Workers and Community Leaders in Conversation

Monday, March 3, 2025 6:25pm to 7:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Join Dr. Leigh Patel, Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor, for a panel discussion and conversation with Iowa cultural workers and community leaders. Dr. Patel is a Professor of Educational Foundation, Organizations and Policy at University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Patel's work focuses on the ways that formal education has consistently acted as one site of coloniality and oppression, and that education and studying is one of the strongest tools for liberation. Political education and...
A Conversation with Scholars At Risk promotional image

A Conversation with Scholars At Risk

Wednesday, March 5, 2025 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum
Join us for a public conversation for faculty, students and staff from across campus about the work of Scholars at Risk to protect and promote academic freedom worldwide. SAR staff representatives Clare Farne Robinson (Director of Advocacy Programs) and Adam Braver (Student Advocacy Seminar Coordinator and Author) will offer remarks on the current state of academic freedom globally, the evolving definition and implementation framework for academic freedom within international law and policy, and...
Writing for The Conversation: Graduate Students promotional image

Writing for The Conversation: Graduate Students

Thursday, March 6, 2025 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual
Join the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Graduate College for a virtual introduction 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 beyond the borders of our state. Articles are geared toward the general...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat

Friday, March 14, 2025 5:00pm
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025! Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
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

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Katie Porter's New Book Examines Effects of Consumer Debt

In 2008, Katie Porter (pictured below), then a UI College of Law professor, proposed a topic for the Obermann Summer Seminar on consumer debt in America. For two weeks the following summer, she and a group of eleven participant—including professors in law, psychology, urban and regional planning and medicine—met at Obermann to discuss different perspectives on this topic. Each participant came...

Interdisciplinarity is Focus of Obermann Workshop

Richard Handler, Director of the Program in Global Development Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia will lead a discussion on March 5 at 3:00 pm based on his career as a scholar, teacher and administrator whose work cuts across the geographical and disciplinary boundaries. This informal conversation -- "The Art of Interdisciplinarity" -- will take place in the...

Humanities and Public Life Series Announced

Teresa Mangum, Director of the Obermann Center, is co-editing a new book series for The University of Iowa Press with Anne Valk, Associate Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. Humanities and Public Life will feature books examining projects using the arts and humanities to promote community building and civic change. These...

18 Graduate Fellows Engage in Graduate Institute

The 6th annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Public Engagement and the Academy will have three more Graduate Fellows than in past years, thanks to additional funding from the UI Graduate College. This year's co-directors (shown at right), Rachel Williams (GWSS and Art & Art History) and Chuck Connerly (Urban & Regional Planning) will lead a group of students who hail from degree programs as...

Teresa Mangum Joins Imagining America Board

Obermann Director Teresa Mangum has been named to the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA). Imagining America is a consortium of universities and organizations dedicated to advancing the public and civic purposes of humanities, arts, and design. The UI has been a member for nine years. This year, the UI sent nearly 20 people, including...

Lena Hill Organizes Ellison Events

Incoming Cmiel Semester (Spring, 2012) participant Lena Hill (English) recently organized a weeklong series of panels and readings in association with a visiting producer/director who is adapting Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man for the stage. After participating in a workshop with Hancher Auditorium and the Center for Teaching about how to incorporate Hancher events into UI classrooms, Hill...

Recent Events

Conversatorio with Hector Abad Faciolince and Horacio Castellanos Moya promotional image

Conversatorio with Hector Abad Faciolince and Horacio Castellanos Moya

Wednesday, November 3, 2021 2:30pm to 3:30pm
Old Capitol Museum
Hector Abad Faciolince, Ida Cordelia Beam Disinguished Visiting Professor, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, will discuss Latin American literature and their shared experiences as writers in exile from political voilence. Reception to follow. This event is made possible by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the International Writing Program (IWP), the Obermann...
Critical Language Awareness and Critical Literacy in the Classroom promotional image

Critical Language Awareness and Critical Literacy in the Classroom

Saturday, October 30, 2021 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual
Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza will be speaking about critical language awareness and critical literacy in the classroom  This event is sponsored by the Obermann Center and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Registration is required for this event.  Follow the link to register:  https://uiowa.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0ilD82UaGJWlynA?Q_CHL=qr
Critical Literacy, Agency, and Sociolinguistic Justice in Language Education promotional image

Critical Literacy, Agency, and Sociolinguistic Justice in Language Education

Friday, October 29, 2021 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Virtual
Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza will speak about critical literacy, agency, and sociolinguistic justice as part of the Teaching and Heritage Language series sponsored by The Obermann Center and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Please view attached flyer for more information.
Cinematic Arts Lecture Series: Daniel Durant promotional image

Cinematic Arts Lecture Series: Daniel Durant

Friday, October 29, 2021 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Virtual
Cinematic Arts Lecture Series: Daniel Durant Friday, October 29th, 2021 3:30pm to 5:00pm Virtual event RSVP at https://uiowa.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUode-tqDsrE9Mzg2pZ8bOZeQOCUFvwCcZK “Daniel Durant: Breaking Barriers via Deaf Representation in Cinema, Theatre, and the Arts” Join actor Daniel Durant for a lecture and Q & A in which he discusses his barrier-breaking career from Broadway to Hollywood, the importance of authentic Deaf representation in film, theatre, and television, the...
What Do We Mean by Research Now?—Perspectives from National Foundations and the Researchers They Support promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now?—Perspectives from National Foundations and the Researchers They Support

Friday, October 29, 2021 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is delighted to welcome both national leaders of funding bodies and impressive recipients the our second round of “What Do We Mean by Research Now?” So often, when a scholar—especially a junior faculty member—proposes a groundbreaking project outside of traditional project, the response is: “But how we would evaluate that?” However, in the last decade, organizations that have long funded traditional research have become both advocates for and...
Why Anne Frank Still Matters—An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Why Anne Frank Still Matters—An Obermann Conversation

Monday, October 18, 2021 5:00pm to 6:00pm
Virtual
For several generations, Anne Frank has been a household name—the WWII diarist whose posthumously published book has been translated into more than 70 languages. But do younger generations know her story? When they encounter her, what resonates with them? In this conversation, we'll consider Anne's legacy and the ways her experience as a refugee, a person in hiding, an advocate for human rights, and a joyful creative spirit can speak to new generations. Speakers will include: Kirsten Kumpf...