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.

View more events

Spacer

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

Next-Generation Dissertations—New Projects for an Engaged Academy promotional image

Next-Generation Dissertations—New Projects for an Engaged Academy

Monday, March 7, 2022 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Virtual

Dissertation reform is an essential thread in the tapestry of reimagining doctoral education. More and more scholars are finding creative ways to share their scholarly research and intellectual insights in dynamic, engaging forms such as graphic novels, mobile games, documentary films, and more, and are having an impact both within and beyond the academy. Join several humanities and social science scholars and the advisors who have supported them to learn more about these projects and why this...

Application Deadline: Mellon Sawyer Seminar Post-Doctoral Scholar promotional image

Application Deadline: Mellon Sawyer Seminar Post-Doctoral Scholar

Friday, March 4, 2022 11:59pm

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa welcomes applications for a full-time, twelve-month Post-Doctoral Scholar to begin on August 15, 2022. The Post-Doctoral Fellowship is for the academic year and includes participation in the 2022-2023 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on “Racial Reckoning and Social Justice through Comics” to be led by Corey Creekmur (Cinematic Arts, English, Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies), Ana Merino (Spanish and Portuguese), and Rachel Williams...

Carl V. Gisolfi Seminar Series: "The Misunderstanding of Exercise for Those with Autism" by David Geslak promotional image

Carl V. Gisolfi Seminar Series: "The Misunderstanding of Exercise for Those with Autism" by David Geslak

Friday, March 4, 2022 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Iowa Bioscience Innovation Facility

Exercise is one of the most underutilized and cost-­effective treatments for individuals with autism. In addition to the health-­related benefits, research shows that exercise can increase attention span, reduce stress, enhance language development and enhance well-being for individuals with autism. David S. Geslak, President and Founder of Exercise Connection, has trained professionals around the world. In this lecture, titled, "The Misunderstanding of Exercise for Those with Autism," he will...

Starting & Sustaining a Writing Group — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop promotional image

Starting & Sustaining a Writing Group — An Obermann Get It Done Workshop

Friday, March 4, 2022 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

Those of us who write either by compulsion or necessity often yearn for a group of co-creators who will keep us company and hold us accountable. Writing groups seem like the answer to the often lonely work of crafting words. In this informal lunchtime session, Naomi Greyser will provide ideas for how to mindfully start a group and then sustain it—which can be trickier than it seems.

Naomi is the head writing coach at the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. She is a faculty...

Igniting Change One Wall at a Time — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Igniting Change One Wall at a Time — An Obermann Conversation

Thursday, March 3, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

When two large figures took shape on Burlington Street in Iowa City last summer, passersby had to contend with messages that went beyond the colorful, playful images of other downtown murals. "Weaponize your privilege" reads one of the so-called Oracles of Iowa City. The twin images are part of a long history of public art that challenges viewers and pushes for change, while asking who the "public" is in public art. Hear from artists and scholars involved in this project and other large-scale...

Provost's Global Forum: Teaching Anne Frank - Joel Barkan Memorial Lecture promotional image

Provost's Global Forum: Teaching Anne Frank - Joel Barkan Memorial Lecture

Wednesday, March 2, 2022 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Virtual

February 28 - March 2, 2022, the University of Iowa will host scholars, experts, and researchers from around the world as part of the 2022 Provost’s Global Forum, "Teaching Anne Frank."

With a goal to inspire discussions of global affairs and build relationships between the university and the state of Iowa, this Provost's Global Forum brings together a multi-disciplinary panel of experts from Iowa and across Europe to highlight the educational value and continuing relevance of Anne Frank's...