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...

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News

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...

Burial Mounds Focus of Weeklong NEH Grant Preparation

John Doershuk, Iowa's State Archaeologist, will lead a group this week (June 25-29) at the Obermann Center to prepare for an NEH Collaborative Research Grant. The group, which includes participants from the State Archaeologist's Office, UI faculty, and representatives from American Indian tribes, is seeking to advance investigation of prehistoric mound building. Ancient burial mounds appear to be...
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Recent Events

Podcasting with Purpose: James Boo promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: James Boo

Thursday, March 4, 2021 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Calling all podcasters, podcast enthusiasts, and podcast newbies! Learn from expert podcasters about the craft of podcasting with purpose, from the nuts and bolts of recording and editing audio to the intellectual and creative labor of audio storytelling. As part of our goal to prepare graduate students for a wide range of careers serving the public good, Humanities for the Public Good is exploring new and innovative methods of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making. The Podcasting...

Dr. Robert Bullard: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice promotional image

Dr. Robert Bullard: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice

Monday, March 1, 2021 7:00pm
Virtual

Dr. Robert Bullard, the Father of Environmental Justice, will give a lecture and engage in a Q&A session.

Talk Title: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice

Climate change is the defining global environmental justice, human rights, and public health issue of the twenty-first century. The most vulnerable populations in the United States and around the world will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks because of where they live, their limited income and economic means, and their...

Fulbright Workshop for Graduate Students in the Humanities promotional image

Fulbright Workshop for Graduate Students in the Humanities

Monday, March 1, 2021 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Virtual

Please join us on Monday, March 1, 2021 from 1-2pm CT for an information session on the Fulbright U.S. Student Program geared toward master’s and doctoral students (applicants must be U.S. citizens). The workshop topics will include:

the basics of writing a Fulbright proposal how to find an affiliation abroad for your research or creative work how to plan the optimal time to apply while working with your advisor

UI Fulbright Faculty Mentors Professor Kathleen Newman (Spanish and...

Humanities Without Walls Info Session promotional image

Humanities Without Walls Info Session

Tuesday, February 23, 2021 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is proud to be a member of the Andrew W. Mellon–funded Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium, which fosters collaborative research and explores the contributions of humanities in the workplace.

HWW has provided the Obermann Center funding to help UI faculty prepare proposals for HWW seed grant applications (due in November 2021). To learn more about the seed grants and how to apply for them, we welcome you to attend one of our upcoming Zoom...

Podcasting with Purpose: Mark Riechers and Anne Strainchamps promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: Mark Riechers and Anne Strainchamps

Thursday, February 18, 2021 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Virtual

Calling all podcasters, podcast enthusiasts, and podcast newbies! Learn from expert podcasters about the craft of podcasting with purpose, from the nuts and bolts of recording and editing audio to the intellectual and creative labor of audio storytelling. As part of our goal to prepare graduate students for a wide range of careers serving the public good, Humanities for the Public Good is exploring new and innovative methods of interpretation, storytelling, and meaning-making. The Podcasting...

COVID's Lessons: End of Life and Grief - An Obermann Conversation promotional image

COVID's Lessons: End of Life and Grief - An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, February 16, 2021 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

The past year has made the end of life and grief a daily communal event, as we receive numbers from the headlines and news from friends and family. In the West, death and grief have often been private acts, but COVID-19, along with the twin pandemic of racism and its inherent grief, has altered how we tend to these universal aspects of human experience. In this conversation, we'll hear from a palliative care physician, a hospice nurse, and a scholar regarding lessons from this past year. 

Parti...