Upcoming Events

Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat promotional image

Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat

Monday, May 12 to Friday, May 16, 2025 (all day)
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...
Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library
Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders, and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library
Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders, and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

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...
Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026)

Friday, October 24, 2025 11:59pm
111 Church Street
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2026 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...

News

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...

Chris Brochu

Chris Brochu (Fellow-in-Residence, Spring 2011) has looked at crocodile fossils in Namibia, Italy, and China. Once in Nairobi, the lights went out and he worked by flashlight. During a visit to a collection of crocodile collectors in France, the associate professor in Geoscience photographed fossils in one member’s backyard while enjoying a bottle of local wine. Brochu didn’t begin graduate school...

Recent Events

Pecha Kucha "Engage the Innovators" promotional image

Pecha Kucha "Engage the Innovators"

Thursday, November 7, 2024 10:00am to 4:00pm
University Capitol Centre
Join us for the University of Iowa’s very first Mental Health and Well-Being Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kucha, Japanese for chit-chat, is a fast paced, imagery-focused workshop that elevates the voices of our campus “mental health and well-being innovators.” Attend these workshops to: •    Discover new ways of thinking about work from a mental health & well-being lens •    Get tangible takeaways about innovative mental health and well-being practices occurring on campus •    Create connections to...
Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Director (2025–26) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Director (2025–26)

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 5:00pm
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! These imaginative half- and whole-day symposia connect the arts and humanities with design, politics, health sciences, environmental studies, technology, and other disciplines via a compelling topic. Symposia should...
Counterpoint: The Politics of (International) Writing promotional image

Counterpoint: The Politics of (International) Writing

Monday, October 14, 2024 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building
How do politics affect what poets or novelists write, and even how they write it? How does literature inform political discourse? What is cultural diplomacy, why is it so important, and what is the UI’s role in promoting it? For this inaugural event in the Obermann Center’s new Counterpoint public conversation series, Christopher Merrill — poet, nonfiction writer, translator, editor, and director of the UI’s renowned International Writing Program — and Loren Glass, a historian of creative...
Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2025) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2025)

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 5:00pm
The 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 or four 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...
Keith Haring, Censorship, and the Power of Art | Panel Discussion promotional image

Keith Haring, Censorship, and the Power of Art | Panel Discussion

Thursday, September 26, 2024 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Iowa City Public Library
Join us for a panel discussion exploring the power of art and information in the face of censorship. This collaborative event by the Stanley Museum of Art, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Iowa City Public Library will explore the enduring impact of Keith Haring's work in the fight against HIV/AIDS. We'll discuss the historical and contemporary implications of banned books on sexual health and the importance of unrestricted access to information. Panel members: • Saba Vlach...
Cultivating Success: International Scholarship and Creative Work promotional image

Cultivating Success: International Scholarship and Creative Work

Thursday, September 26, 2024 1:30pm to 3:00pm
Virtual
Scholarly and creative research activity is a linchpin of faculty life at the University of Iowa. International collaboration has been demonstrated to boost the visibility and impact of research. This webinar will focus on the challenges and rewards of international scholarship, including cross-national research collaborations, grant proposals, ways to promote research to domestic and international audiences, the opportunities and potential pitfalls of publishing in non-US journals, and tactics...