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

Working Groups Look Ahead to Second Year

2011-2012 has been the inaugural year for the Obermann Working Groups. This program, modeled on successful programs at several centers around the country, is intended to provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups of faculty and advanced graduate students with a shared intellectual interest. We have had four Working Groups this year: Intergenre Explorations, Women's Health and...
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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...

Recent Events

Podcasting with Purpose: Rebecca Nagle promotional image

Podcasting with Purpose: Rebecca Nagle

Thursday, April 1, 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...

The Writing-Enriched Curriculum: A discussion with Pamela Flash promotional image

The Writing-Enriched Curriculum: A discussion with Pamela Flash

Thursday, April 1, 2021 2:30pm
Virtual

In this discussion, Pamela Flash (University of Minnesota) will introduce the Writing-Enriched Curriculum (WEC) model and will think with local stakeholders about affordances and challenges associated with its potential implementation at the University of Iowa. WEC offers a departmental model designed to (1) support the curricular integration of relevant modes of writing and writing instruction and (2) to increase the rate at which student writing meets locally-generated faculty expectations...

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference) promotional image

Performing Latina/o/x Futurity (Sawyer Seminar Closing Conference)

Friday, March 26 10:00am to Saturday, March 27, 2021 3:00pm
Virtual

When COVID-19 interrupted the late spring events and culmination of the yearlong Mellon Sawyer Seminar Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging, we didn't know that the events would eventually end up online and across institutions. In 2019-20, seminar co-directors Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Ariana Ruiz, and Rene Rocha worked across disciplines to organize six symposia, a film series, and a podcast. With Wanzer-Serrano now in the Communications Department at the University of Texas...

STEM and Race: Can We Talk? promotional image

STEM and Race: Can We Talk?

Saturday, March 20, 2021 1:00pm to 4:15pm
Virtual

Can We Talk?

"Can We Talk?" explores the issue of ‘social belonging’ in the context of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and the effect it has on the lives of underrepresented people of color (UR-POC) who are pursuing an education or career in STEM, or who have decided to leave because of an overwhelming feeling of not belonging. The film has screened at venues across the U.S., at scientific conferences, colleges and universities, federal agencies, and for non-profit organizations. In...

Native Lands: Belonging and Reclaiming — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Native Lands: Belonging and Reclaiming — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, March 10, 2021 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Shelley Buffalo and Carrie Schuettpelz share their experiences as indigenous women who have thought hard about issues of belonging. Together, they'll consider what it means to belong to a Native American tribe, in terms of relationship to the land, the notorious blood quantum system for "measuring" someone's right to membership, and Indian cards. As people who have traveled far from home, living across the U.S. and abroad, they'll wonder together about how far and how long one can wander from...

Info Session: Humanities for the Public Good Graduate Research Assistant Position

Tuesday, March 9, 2021 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Virtual

Interested in the larger ecosystem of the humanities, diverse careers, and learning the skills necessary to be a successful project director and scholar? Apply to join the Humanities for the Public Good team as our 2021-2022 Graduate Research Assistant. Learn more about the role and meet our team at this March 9th 1:30 pm CT info session.

The Obermann Center seeks a graduate student to support the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities for the Public Good (HPG), under the supervision...