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.

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News

Jose Fernandez

Humanities Without Walls Externship Program Fosters Career Diversity, Community Collaboration

Eleanor Ball
At some point, every student pursuing a graduate degree in the humanities has been asked, “So you're going to be a professor?” Humanities PhDs and MAs are often seen as hyperspecialized degrees useful only in the realm of academia—but in fact, the analytical and communication skills, as well as the broad understanding of culture attained through high-level study of the humanities, sets students up for success in a variety of careers, especially in the nonprofit sector. As globalization and rapid technological advancements are transforming the job market and accelerating its pace of change, it’s essential that graduate students be prepared to apply their skills in unexpected ways. University faculty, however, are not typically trained to guide these students toward meaningful, productive careers outside of academia.
world map with flag pins

Obermann Center Invites International Applicants for Residential Fellows Program

Eleanor Ball
The Obermann Center is thrilled to announce that it is expanding its residential fellowship program to accept international researchers and artists. Fellowships offer dedicated space, time, and funding for scholars and artists based outside of the United States to develop collaborations and pursue independent work at the University of Iowa. Up to eight international fellowships will be granted every academic year, and fellows will receive a $2,000 stipend, office space at the Obermann Center, access to University of Iowa libraries, and other benefits.
international faculty panel

Global connections: How international faculty shape Iowa’s future

On September 26, 2024, International Programs hosted a webinar focused on international faculty success in international scholarship and creative work as a part of the Cultivating Success: A Global Faculty Initiative series. Obermann Center director Luis Martín-Estudillo joined a distinguished panel of UI faculty experts to offer valuable insights into navigating the complexities of academia as an international faculty member at Iowa.
Counterpoint logo

Introducing Counterpoint, the Obermann Center's Newest Series

Eleanor Ball
This October, the Obermann Center is thrilled to present the inaugural event in our new annual public conversation series, Counterpoint. These events will highlight a University of Iowa scholar with a long career of making critical contributions to their field, placing them in dialogue across the disciplines with another scholar from a different yet complementary field. 
Eleanor Ball standing by Obermann library shelves

Sorting Through Scholarship

Eleanor Ball
Three months ago, I stepped into the Obermann Center’s library for the first time. My task was simple, if sizeable: I needed to organize the ~600 volumes in the collection by the end of the summer. As a student in Iowa’s School of Library & Information Science, I was excited for my first solo library project. I’ve been interested in academic librarianship, scholarly communications, and research support for a long time. However, I knew I would have to approach the work strategically and manage my time well in order to succeed. Our goal was to transform the library into a showcase for the works of Obermann scholars. But we also own many books that are unrelated to Obermann, and all of our books were intermingled without regard for subject, date, or author. After about thirty minutes of pacing up and down the library on my first day, I decided I was going to take every book off the shelf.
Buckley and Bakopolous working on the script

Lights, Camera, Action!

Eleanor Ball
During their Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant (IDRG) in summer 2024, screenwriter Dean Bakopoulos (Cinematic Arts) and drama scholar Jennifer Buckley (English & Theatre Arts) wrote the pilot for a new historical TV miniseries: Anton & Olga. The show, which Bakopoulos and Buckley plan to pitch to producers early next year, follows revolutionary playwright Anton Chekhov, actress Olga Knipper, and their colleagues at the newly-established Moscow Arts Theater (MAT) through personal, political, and artistic upheaval at the end of the nineteenth century. By exploring the creative clashes and collaborations that fueled Chekhov and the MAT, Bakopoulos and Buckley aim to reintroduce modern audiences to an important part of theatrical history. “So many of our ideas of what counts as ‘good acting’ come from them [the MAT],” explains Buckley, “especially from their co-founder, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose ‘system’ still gets taught today in acting programs. Our demands for nuance, subtlety, and emotional truth are all founded on their work.”
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Recent Events

Letter of Inquiry Deadline: HPG Humanities Labs, Summer 2023 promotional image

Letter of Inquiry Deadline: HPG Humanities Labs, Summer 2023

Tuesday, March 7, 2023 5:00pm

The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning at the graduate level that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities with both a social challenge and skills valued in multiple career settings. The Lab grant will be awarded to one or more faculty members from humanities or humanities...

Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America — A Discussion with Tara Bynum and Kabria Baumgartner promotional image

Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America — A Discussion with Tara Bynum and Kabria Baumgartner

Thursday, March 2, 2023 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Virtual

On Thursday, March 2, at 2:30 p.m. CST, Professors Tara Bynum (English, CLAS) and Kabria Baumgartner (History and Africana Studies, Northeastern University) will discuss Bynum's new book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America (University of Illinois Press), which tells the stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free.

Bynum, a 2021 recipient of the Book Ends: Obermann/OVPR Book Completion Workshop...

Reproductive Justice Across Literature, Law & Medicine: Our Bodies Ourselves Past, Present & Future promotional image

Reproductive Justice Across Literature, Law & Medicine: Our Bodies Ourselves Past, Present & Future

Thursday, March 2, 2023 12:00pm to 1:15pm
Virtual

Join us for a conversation between two University of Iowa students and three key figures of Our Bodies Ourselves, the legendary collective that published the groundbreaking text Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1969. This organization has continued to advocate for reproductive justice—developing powerful and inspiring models of health communication, medical education, legal advocacy and literary publishing on the body. Please register for the webinar-style conversation and Q&A, which will range wide and...

Application Deadline: Humanities for the Public Good Graduate Research Assistant (Fall 2023) promotional image

Application Deadline: Humanities for the Public Good Graduate Research Assistant (Fall 2023)

Wednesday, February 15, 2023 5:00pm

The Obermann Center seeks a graduate student to support the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities for the Public Good (HPG), under the supervision of the Director of the Obermann Center, who is the Principal Investigator on the project. The ideal candidate should be an outstanding scholar-teacher who is interested in conducting and sharing research on the larger ecosystem of the humanities and diverse careers for humanities scholars and learning the skills necessary to be a successful...

*My Electric Genealogy* Performance by Sarah Kanouse promotional image

*My Electric Genealogy* Performance by Sarah Kanouse

Monday, February 13, 2023 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Art Building West

Part storytelling, part lecture, and part live documentary film, Sarah Kanouse’s solo performance “My Electric Genealogy” explores the shifting cultures and politics of energy in Los Angeles and the American West through the lens of her own family. 

“For nearly 40 years my grandfather worked for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, designing, planning, and supervising the network of lines connecting the city to its distant sources of electricity,” Kanouse explains. “The grid was his...

An Evening with Joe Sacco promotional image

An Evening with Joe Sacco

Thursday, February 9, 2023 6:30pm to 8:00pm
University of Iowa Main Library

Join us in conversation with journalist, comics artist, and Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Joe Sacco, (Safe Area Gorazde, Paying the Land) interviewed by Rachel Williams for a talk about race, war, identity but also about his personal creative process and the art of comics. 

This is part of a three-day event devoted to "Drawing Panels and Crossing Borders: Negotiating Self and Other in Comics" with MariNaomi, Candida Rifkind, Jorge Santos, and Jose Alaniz. Organized by the...