Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

The Research Development Office is hosting an in-person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

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

3MT Workshop: Finding Your Authentic Speaking Voice promotional image

3MT Workshop: Finding Your Authentic Speaking Voice

Friday, September 20, 2019 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

To help graduate students prepare for a 3MT presentation, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is partnering with UI Theatre lecturer and local actor Kristy Hartsgrove-Mooers to lead an hour-and-a-half workshop. Kristy will help participants learn how to use voice, posture, and breath to create a relaxed and confident speaking experience. Kristy regularly teaches “Speaking for Success” and has appeared locally at Riverside Theatre and the Iowa Summer Repertory.

This workshop is intended for...

NEH Regional Application Writing Workshop promotional image

NEH Regional Application Writing Workshop

Friday, September 20, 2019 8:30am to 12:30pm

The University of Iowa will host a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Regional Application Writing Workshop on September 20, 2019, 8:30am-12:30pm.

The workshop will include a presentation about NEH grant programs, a discussion of grant-writing tips, and a demonstration of NEH's peer review system.

This workshop is free and open to scholars from any institution.

Imagining Latinidades in Global and National Perspective (Sawyer Seminar Opening Conference)

Friday, September 20 to Saturday, September 21, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this opening conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help frame the larger scope of a yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” Speakers include the following:

Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University. Her research spans urban ethnography, the political economy of culture and media, consumption, immigration, and geographies of inequality and race.

Valerie Martinez-Ebers is...

Imagining Latinidades in Global and National Perspective (Sawyer Seminar Opening Conference)

Thursday, September 19 to Saturday, September 21, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this opening conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help frame the larger scope of a yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” Speakers include the following:

Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University. Her research spans urban ethnography, the political economy of culture and media, consumption, immigration, and geographies of inequality and race.

Valerie Martinez-Ebers is...

Humanities Graduate Education for the World’s Work: A Symposium promotional image

Humanities Graduate Education for the World’s Work: A Symposium

Friday, September 13 9:00am to Saturday, September 14, 2019 12:15pm
hotelVetro

Join executive directors Paula Krebs (MLA) and Jim Grossman (AHA) and other visionaries at our second convening on career diversity and humanities graduate education. We will zero in on public scholarship and graduate education, supporting students from underrepresented groups, and partnering with community colleges—where the humanities are thriving.

This event is co-sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the Graduate College.

 

 

 

Not So Straight & Narrow: Managing Our Rural & Urban Waterways—An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Not So Straight & Narrow: Managing Our Rural & Urban Waterways—An Obermann Conversation

Thursday, September 12, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Riverfront Crossings Park

Craig Just, water quality expert and UI professor of civil & environmental engineering, and Rai Tokuhisa, Water Resource Engineer Intern with RDG Planning & Design—which was involved with the waterway project that runs behind Iowa City's Big Grove Brewery & Taproom—will lead a walking conversation about restorative watershed management. Craig and Rai have been involved in both rural and urban projects and will speak to this site specifically, as well as Craig's two new EPA grant projects.

This...