Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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

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...

Overlap of Gesture and Memory

When Susan Wagner Cook, an assistant professor in Psychology (CLAS) submitted a paper on hand gestures a few years ago, she received feedback from reviewers that her understanding of memory was about twenty years behind. Disappointed, but also knowing that she was unlikely to assimilate two decades of research into her thinking without serious commitment, she tabled the paper. She gave it second...
Obermann center house

Fall 2012 Fellows-in-Residence

The Obermann Center welcomes its Fall 2012 Fellows-in-Residence next week. Six UI faculty members and one UI graduate student will work on projects ranging from the historical relationship between humans and mosquitoes in the Upper Mississippi River Basin to mathematical problems in X-ray dark-field tomography. The Fellows include the recipient of a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship...

Taking a Page from Industry to Clean Up Drinking Water

There is more in that glass of water you just drank than meets the eye. Caffeine, perfumes, ibuprofen, and hormones are just a few of the pollutants that are not regulated and for which wastewater plants do not commonly treat. Known as “emerging contaminates,” these pollutants are accepted largely because there is no clear way to remove them. And so we all drink them regularly. What if we could...
Lisa Heineman

Working Group Members Perform and Gain an Award

Lisa Heineman (History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies) and Kim Marra (Theatre Arts and American Studies) formed one of the inaugural 2011 Obermann Working Groups in order to explore how scholars might communicate their academic interests through performance and artists might use researchers’ methods to explore issues they usually address before live audiences. As scholars, Marra and...

Illustrating Plutarch

Artist Katie Merz and author John D'Agata first met nearly ten years ago when they were at the MacDowell Colony, the famed artists' colony in New Hampshire. More recently, they reconnected when both had residencies in Marfa, Texas. "I was making acetate pieces in which I took text from things I was reading and threw it into old cartoons," says the Brooklyn-based Merz whose style comes in part from...

Recent Events

Racism and Education: A Discussion promotional image

Racism and Education: A Discussion

Monday, February 12, 2024 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Virtual

Join us for a discussion on teaching about race and racism amidst current events.

Conflict and Collaboration: Trauma-Informed Responses to Teaching Challenges promotional image

Conflict and Collaboration: Trauma-Informed Responses to Teaching Challenges

Friday, January 26, 2024 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Virtual

Bridget McCarthy from the Association of Mental Health Coordinators (AMHC) will give a presentation, which will be followed by a Q&A regarding what trauma-informed support in the classroom looks like and how to implement it in our own work. While the presentation will be geared towards the teaching of performance, anyone responsible for students in a classroom can benefit from this knowledge.

Bridget McCarthy is an artist, advocate, and a mental health coordinator for theater, TV and Film. She...

Opera Studies Forum Lecture with Anna Barker promotional image

Opera Studies Forum Lecture with Anna Barker

Wednesday, January 24, 2024 5:30pm to 6:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Dr. Anna Barker will give a lecture on the opera Carmen, which will be streamed in HD in cinemas on Saturday, Jan. 27.

Anna Barker received her PhD in Comparative Literature in 2002 with a dissertation in translation studies. At the University of Iowa, she has taught courses in the English Department, in Comparative Literature, in Russian Literature, and in the Honors Program. Her areas of interest include 19th-century Russian and European literature, Russian cultural history, 19th century...

Out of the Archive Film Series: Oscar Micheaux's 'Body and Soul' with Live Musical Accompaniment promotional image

Out of the Archive Film Series: Oscar Micheaux's 'Body and Soul' with Live Musical Accompaniment

Thursday, January 18, 2024 6:15pm to 9:30pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

Please join us at FilmScene for the continuation of "Out of the Archive: Envisioning Blackness," a monthly screening and discussion series that celebrates the vibrant  tradition of Black cinema by featuring rarely screened, newly restored, and archivally-engaged films. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (with students, in particular, encouraged to pick $0). Join us before each screening for a free dinner reception catered by local restaurants, and stay after each film for post-screening conversations...

Canceled
Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing, Session II: Working with Graduate Students promotional image

Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing, Session II: Working with Graduate Students

Wednesday, January 10, 2024 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Virtual

Teaching Data Visualization and Communication: Do you struggle to teach your students how to best graph and visualize their data and then present their data? Join us for a one-hour workshop focused on helping students grasp principles of graphic design, data visualization (graphing and figure preparation), and effective slides for polished, persuasive presentations. After attending this workshop, you will have a clear set of expectations to share with your students on what makes for effective...

Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing I: Making Writing Assignments Creative Across the Disciplines promotional image

Winter Institute for Teaching with Writing I: Making Writing Assignments Creative Across the Disciplines

Wednesday, January 10, 2024 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

Tired of the "research paper" assignment? Bored reading reflection papers? Interested in using writing to promote student learning but not sure how to make it fun? Join us for a lively discussion of how to make writing assignments more creative and engaging. See examples of innovative assignments from instructors across campus, hear from a panel of faculty who have redesigned their approaches, and workshop ideas to use in your own courses.

This is the first of two sessions offered by the Instit...