Upcoming Events

"Tyrant, prisoner, lover — 'Fidelio', an opera for troubled times"

Friday, March 14, 2025 4:00pm
Voxman Music Building
Introduction to Beethoven's opera "Fidelio" and the upcoming production at the Met Opera which will be streamed life in cinemas on Saturday, March 15 at noon.
Book Reading by Samira K. Mehta promotional image

Book Reading by Samira K. Mehta

Tuesday, March 25, 2025 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Join the University of Iowa (UI) Jewish Studies Network, an International Programs affinity group, as they host Samira K. Mehta for the reading of her book at Prairie Lights Books.
Discussion of Contraception and American Religion promotional image

Discussion of Contraception and American Religion

Wednesday, March 26, 2025 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Jefferson Building
Join the University of Iowa (UI) Jewish Studies Network, an International Programs affinity group, as they host Samira K. Mehta for a discussion on contraception and American religion.
Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Thursday, March 27 to Friday, March 28, 2025 (all day)
As calls for transnational solidarity among reproductive justice movements emerge, communities are asking how reproductive liberation is tethered to various social movements. Directed by Lina-Maria Murillo (Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies and History) and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies), this symposium brings together scholars and artists with local, regional, and global perspectives to bear on the pursuit of reproductive justice as we...
View more events

Spacer

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat

Friday, March 14, 2025 5:00pm
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025! Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26)

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5:00pm
Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding ($500 per year for 3 years) 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 explore new work and to share their own research, to organize a symposium, and to develop grant proposals. This program allows participants from across the campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a...
Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 5:00pm
Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends—Obermann/OVPR 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 in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three...

News

black and white photo of US soldiers swing dancing

Dancing During War: Kowal Explores WWII Photo Archives

“When we think about performance during World War Two, we think about USO shows and famous American performers like Bob Hope and Bette Davis,” says Rebekah Kowal, Spring 2022 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence. On the face of it, these performers were sent to overseas U.S. military camps to uplift soldiers’ spirits by providing a sense of home and “Americanness.” But there were many other forms of movement and performance that served other (rather overt) purposes, from displaying Western cultural dominance and exerting control over subjected people’s bodies to reintegrating the detained, creating a pathway to U.S. citizenship, and serving as a normalcy touchstone for the dancers. Kowal (Dance, CLAS) is deep in research for a new book tentatively titled War Theatre: Dancing American Citizenship and Empire during World War II. After writing about the contribution of American modern dance to aesthetic and social change in the 1950s (How to Do Things with Dance: Performing Change in Postwar America [Wesleyan UP, 2010]) and about globalism and the performance of international dance in the U.S. after WWII (Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America [Oxford, 2019]), she figured her next project would move away from the WWII era. But one sleepless night—“one of those bizarre moments during COVID,” she recalls—she pulled up the National Archives’ online catalog and started typing interesting keywords.
close up of hebrew writing

Working Group Spotlight: Jewish Studies

This is part of a series highlighting recently formed Obermann Center Working Groups. Lisa Heineman (History), co-director of the Jewish Studies Working Group with Ari Ariel (History), shared her responses. Thank you, Lisa! If you are interested in starting an Obermann Working Group for 2022-23, the application deadline is April 12.  Q. This is the first year of your Working Group. What led you to start it?  A: Iowa is the only Big 10 school without a Jewish Studies program. Yet Jewish Studies is an incredibly dynamic field of study, with real contemporary relevance—and we have many terrific teachers and scholars of Jewish Studies on our campus. We were hearing from students, alumni, and parents who made clear there was a demand for the field. We decided it was time to get together and think about how to have a more meaningful presence on campus. Q. What kinds of people and from what disciplines are participating in your Group?   A. We have faculty members from History, International Studies, German, GWSS, Classics, Religious Studies, English, Translation, the Maggid Writing Center…. I hope I’m not forgetting anyone! We have emeriti and graduate students with important areas of expertise, and we have community members who play significant roles in Jewish life beyond our campus.
Men of different races sit around a table studying together. They are wearing matching blue shirts.

Working Group Spotlight: Transform(ED) Justice Collaboratory

In order to understand and amplify our Obermann Working Groups and their diverse activities, this spring we are spotlighting a number of newer groups. For this issue, we talk with Heather Erwin, who co-directs the Transform(ED) Justice Collaboratory group along with Daria Fisher-Page (Law).  Q: This is the first year of your Working Group. What led you to start it?  A: This working group evolved from the Liberal Arts Behind Bars (LABB) working group whose goal was to advance the work of serving incarcerated students. With the reinstatement of Pell grant eligibility for incarcerated students and the reimagining campus safety initiative on campus there are many opportunities to work toward building a campus community that prioritizes inclusivity and support for people impacted by the criminal legal system. The mission of the Transform(ED) Justice Collaboratory is to work toward abolition by building supportive communities, based on evidence created through research, and generating policy that creates necessary change.  
Three advertisements posted in a shop window.

The Language of Social Justice: David Cassels Johnson explores educational language policies

A local restaurant posts a help wanted ad for a dishwasher in Spanish, while server positions are advertised in Hangul (Korean). A teacher encourages students to write in the language of their lived experience, using their multilingual resources. A government nullifies Anglicized words from formal communications. A parent tells her children she won’t tolerate violent language. Each of these is a form of language policy. According to David Cassels Johnson, Associate Professor in the Teaching and Learning Department of the University of Iowa’s College of Education and a Spring 2022 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, “Language policy is any policy that governs the structure, function, use, or education of language.” Each of us is living under numerous language policies. Some at the macro level are decided by institutions; others are created less officially by circles to which we belong. We even make language policies for ourselves when, for instance, we choose not to use some kinds of language or to amplify others.
two college students reading and writing a desk

Working Group Spotlight: Spanish Heritage Speakers in the Classroom

This spring, we're featuring a few of our newer Working Groups. As one of the most popular and largest Obermann Center programs, the Working Groups span a wide range of topics and have members who include emeriti faculty, lecturers, community members, and students, in addition to faculty from both the University of Iowa and other institutions. Here, we speak with Christine Shea (Spanish & Portuguese), who co-directs the Spanish and Heritage Speakers in the Classroom Working Group with Becky Gonzalez (Spanish & Portuguese).  
Two murals on the side of a parking garage with bright colors and African American faces.

Weaponizing Humanities Research: Dellyssa Edinboro and the Oracles Murals

Publicly engaged work never occurs in a vacuum. That’s something Dr. Dellyssa Edinboro shares with her students at Bellevue College as she simultaneously encourages them to actively work to change systems of oppression. “When you move into spaces where you want to make change,” she says, “there are a lot of conversations that need to happen, some of which will have tension and conflict.” Edinboro has firsthand experience of the kinds of twists and turns involved in a successful public project. In 2017, she was part of a small team of students that received a grant to work with the Historic Johnson County Poor Farm to produce a series of creative workshops about mental health. The students devised their project as part of the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy with encouragement from the County staff member who managed the space. The first twist occurred when a key team member, who was an MFA student in the Dance Department, left the project. Without his expertise, it no longer made sense for the group to focus on movement as their primary form of creative expression; instead, they switched to creative writing.

Recent Events

Public Forum for Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Director Candidate: Naomi Greyser

Friday, February 23, 2024 2:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)
Naomi Greyser, associate professor of American Studies, English and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, will deliver a presentation and participate in a Q&A as a candidate for the Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (OCAS).  Greyser serves as executive director of POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry. In her research, teaching and service, Greyser engages the process of knowledge creation, with an eye towards making space for messiness and unpredictability. Her first...
Book Matters: Margot Livesey in conversation with Lan Samantha Chang at Prairie Lights promotional image

Book Matters: Margot Livesey in conversation with Lan Samantha Chang at Prairie Lights

Monday, February 19, 2024 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Prairie Lights Books
Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate Margot Livesey’s new novel, The Road from Belhaven. Livesey is professor of fiction in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of 10 other books. After the reading, Lan Samantha Chang, Writers’ Workshop program director and Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts, will join Livesey for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Appetizers and wine will be available.               Monday, Feb. 19, 2024       ...
Imagining Community in 2030: An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Imagining Community in 2030: An Obermann Conversation

Monday, February 19, 2024 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
What will our community be like in 2030? How are local nonprofits shaping the Iowa City area, and what are their visions for the future? How can we break down the silos of “city” and “neighborhood” to create a better and more unified place for everyone? In this Obermann Conversation, UI faculty and local nonprofit leaders will discuss how we can harness the collective impact model to create a more equitable community. The collective impact model is a community-building strategy involving a...
Application Deadline: What She Said — A Workshop on Empowering Women’s Voices promotional image

Application Deadline: What She Said — A Workshop on Empowering Women’s Voices

Friday, February 16, 2024 5:00pm
Our voices are an important indicator of who we are. Female-presenting speakers often learn self-undermining speaking habits from the people and society around them. How does the voice contribute to our sense of presence and how others perceive us? Tone, inflection, pace, and volume are some of the vocal elements that provide clues for the listener as to what we think and feel. In this workshop, UI Theatre Arts professor Mary Mayo will invite you to develop a greater awareness of your voice and...
Beyond Speech and Representation: Insights from Child Psychotherapy about the Materiality of Learning promotional image

Beyond Speech and Representation: Insights from Child Psychotherapy about the Materiality of Learning

Friday, February 16, 2024 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Seamans Center
Dr. Gail Boldt is a former University of Iowa faculty member and is now a distinguished professor of education at Penn State. She teaches graduate seminars in cultural and critical theory as it relates to contemporary issues in education. At the undergraduate level, she works in elementary and early childhood program literacy education. Dr. Boldt is the Senior Editor of the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series. She is also a psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist, trained in providing play...
Sharing Energy for Climate Communications: Improv and Embodied Activities promotional image

Sharing Energy for Climate Communications: Improv and Embodied Activities

Friday, February 16, 2024 10:00am to 12:00pm
Seamans Center
An active session where we will use techniques from theatrical improvisation to improve communication around climate change. Registration required, please use the Google link to sign up.