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

Sports, Power, & Resistance: Legacies and Futures

Exploring the Intersection of Sports, Media, and Culture

Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
In the ever-evolving landscape of sports, media, and culture, two distinguished University of Iowa scholars, Tom Oates (American Studies and Journalism) and Travis Vogan (Journalism and American Studies), have been instrumental in shaping critical discussions and interdisciplinary explorations. As part of their ongoing commitment to advancing the understanding of sports within broader societal contexts, the two are directing the Obermann Center’s 2023 Arts and Humanities Symposium, “Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures.” With a shared vision of bringing together diverse perspectives, their efforts highlight the important role of sports in contemporary culture and politics. Below is a Q&A with co-directors Thomas Oates and Travis Vogan.
Lisa Schlesinger and Layale Chaker

Exploring Trauma and Imagination: "Ruinous Gods: Suites for Sleeping Children" Opera Takes Shape

Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant recipients Layale Chaker and Lisa Schlesinger (Theatre Arts) are deep in the creative process, weaving together the intricate threads of music, storytelling, and stagecraft to bring to life their ambitious opera, Ruinous Gods: Suites for Sleeping Children. The project, commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, centers on the experiences of displaced children grappling with resignation syndrome—a rare trauma response to displacement—and seeks to carve out a space for imagination and empowerment within the realm of opera.
hands painting a toy car

Scholars Create Demo Derby as Comment on U.S. Political Discourse

Lauren Burrell Cox
A green car with the words “climate change” emblazoned on its doors slams into the back of a red car with the word “healthcare” on it, crumpling the bumper. Other cars with the terms “gun control,” “free speech,” and “abortion” repeatedly crash into each other in the muddy arena at the county fair, until one car emerges victorious. Just Crushing is an artwork taking the form of a demolition derby to embody American political discourse as a spectacle of competitive wreckage. The Interdisciplinary Research Group (IDRG) consists of Allison Rowe (Teaching & Learning), Maia Sheppard (Teaching & Learning), and Nancy Nowacek (Stevens Institute of Technology). Drawing upon the theatrics of Carnivale, the hometown grandiosity of state fairs, and the rich history of destructive art, vehicles representing critical issues in American politics will brutalize one another as the crowd cheers and jeers them on. Through its live, winner-takes-all battle, this project stands in opposition to the polarizing debates of stylized dialogue across partisan media. In this way, Just Crushing literalizes us-versus-them culture and reveals the absurd extremes to which political discourse has arrived: where every issue must fight for a public and a platform. 
Aged hand holding child hand

Exploring Healthy Aging across the Life Course

Lauren Burrell Cox
Health happens in families and yet many health promotion interventions are not tailored for the family as a unit. Multigenerational households (i.e., families that consist of three or more generations) have become a more prevalent family structure in the U.S. and provide essential caregiving functions. This summer, as part of their Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant, "Healthy Aging across the Life Course: Engaging Multigenerational Families Living with Chronic Conditions," Ebonee Johnson (College of Public Health), Duhita Mahatmya (College of Education), and Kimberly Dukes (Internal Medicine) utilized the principles and practices of community engagement to better understand health and healthy aging in multigenerational families experiencing chronic illness and disability. 
Marissa Good (left) and Selveyah Gamblin (right) at the Student Undergraduate Research Festival, April 2023 (photo by Louise Seamster)

Data Justice for Flint: Seamster Leads Effort to Build Accessible Archive with Humanities Without Walls Grand Research Challenge Project

Lauren Burrell Cox
For seven years, the Obermann Center has been a partner in the Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls consortium led by Professor Antoinette Burton at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Our graduate students have attended HWW’s Career Diversity Summer Workshops, and several faculty members have worked with cross-institutional Grand Research Challenge teams. This year, we are delighted that Assistant Professor Louise Seamster (Departments of Sociology & Criminology and African American Studies) was selected as the P.I. of a team focused on "The Flint Water Disaster Public Archive." The ”Flint Water Disaster Public Archive” will re-home public data that has been largely inaccessible to Flint communities—a form of data justice that is of urgent relevance to the history, present, and future of those communities. The project is a collaboration among the University of Iowa, University of Michigan–Flint, and the Flint Democracy Defense League. Below is Obermann Assistant Director Lauren Burrell Cox’s interview with Louise Seamster about the project.
FilmScene exterior

Obermann Center symposium’s ‘Frequências’ film festival explores Afro-Brazilian cinema

Zhenya Loughney
The Daily Iowan
The door of no return; the reinvention of belonging; Blackness in Brazil; these topics and more were the focus of this year’s Obermann Humanities Symposium. Presented in Iowa City by the Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Project Award, the “Frequências” festival displayed lectures, cinema screenings, interventions, exhibits, and performances by contemporary Afro-Brazilian artists and scholars discussing Black diaspora.
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Recent Events

Latina/o/x Migration (Sawyer Seminar Symposium) promotional image

Latina/o/x Migration (Sawyer Seminar Symposium)

Friday, October 25, 2019 (all day)
MERGE

In this one-day symposium -- part of our yearlong Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar on “Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging” -- three invited speakers will explore questions related to migration and national belonging. Each speaker will deliver a plenary address, which will be followed by Q&A.

Speakers include the following: Karma Chávez is Associate Professor and Chair of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a rhetorical...

The Burden of Gun Violence: Trends and Policy Solutions promotional image

The Burden of Gun Violence: Trends and Policy Solutions

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 7:00pm to 9:00pm

This event brings together a panel of experts to discuss the burden of American gun violence and the potential for evidenced-based public policy solutions.

The PPC’s Crime & Justice Policy research program, directed by Mark Berg, is hosting this panel as part of the Run Up to the 2020 Caucus – a series designed to examine different policy topics that will be discussed during the campaign.

Topics will include:

Lethal and non-lethal gun violence trends in the United States Gender and gun...
Conversation: A Vital Tool for Mending Our Democracy promotional image

Conversation: A Vital Tool for Mending Our Democracy

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Many of us long for complex conversations with a greater range of people, and yet we aren't entirely sure how to access such conversations. In this Obermann Conversation, we convene three people -- Lore Baur, Ben Hassman, and Sherry Watt -- who actively organize and facilitate conversations that might be perceived as difficult. Each of them will share some of the skills involved in holding a mutually respectful and beneficial conversation, as well as some of the power that this relatively simple...

Latino/a/x Identity, Popular Culture, & Arts Education: A Visit From Poet José Olivarez promotional image

Latino/a/x Identity, Popular Culture, & Arts Education: A Visit From Poet José Olivarez

Tuesday, October 22, 2019 (all day)

Poetry Workshop with José Olivarez
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
12:30-1:30pm
UCC 2750
Lunch will be provided | Limited to first 20 registered UIowa students
Sign-up by October 12 at tinyurl.com/JOlivarez

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Poetry Reading with José Olivarez
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
6pm
Latino Native American Cultural Center

More information on acclaimed-poet and author of Citizen Illegal (2018) at:

www...

Media Clown: The Analog Clown Enters Digital Space promotional image

Media Clown: The Analog Clown Enters Digital Space

Monday, October 14, 2019 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

Paul Kalina (Theatre Arts, CLAS) and Daniel Fine (Digital Arts Cluster) share their project "Media Clown," which premiered in June at the Prague Quadrennial. The event is the largest festival of stage and theatrical design in the world. The project includes two motion-capture suits and a holographic effect screen, all of which aid in Kalina's clown character (think Keaton, not Bozo) "entering" an iPad and becoming part of the digital world.

The two began planning the project during a Summer...

Free Film Screening: La Bamba (1987)

Thursday, October 10, 2019 5:30pm to 8:30pm
FilmScene

This free screening of the film La Bamba (1987) is part of the yearlong Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar on "Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging." The screening will be followed with a post-discussion.

La Bamba is the biographical story of 1950s rock 'n' roll rage Ritchie Valens (born Ricardo Valenzuela), played by Lou Diamond Phillips. The film follows how the 17-year-old Californian went from farm-laborer to overnight success, including his untimely death in a...