Upcoming Events

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research" will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

"Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods” — keynote lecture by Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam promotional image

"Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods” — keynote lecture by Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam

Thursday, March 26, 2026 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Stanley Museum of Art

This is a keynote lecture for the 2025-2026 Obermann Symposium: "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research."

Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam: "Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods”

Across the social and cultural realms, the rural is often imagined through idyllic and pastoral genres that allow it to be conceived as a refuge from globalization. Pereen's European Research Council–funded project RURAL IMAGINATIONS, concentrating on...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research" will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

 "More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People" — keynote lecture by Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute promotional image

"More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People" — keynote lecture by Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute

Friday, March 27, 2026 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

This is a keynote lecture for the 2025-2026 Obermann Symposium: "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research."

Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute: "More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People"

What are synonyms for rural? Country and small town? Rustic or backcountry? Pastoral or hick? Rural communities are an important part of American life and history, yet they are frequently seen in a deficit model defined by what they are not instead of what they...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

News

Story City by Grant Wood, remixed

Building community around rural research

A pregnant woman in rural Iowa must make so many extra decisions about her and her baby’s health. It isn’t just whether she should go to the hospital about unexpected complications, but which one. If she goes to the closest hospital, will it have the expertise to treat her? If not, will it have an ambulance that can transfer her to a more urban hospital? One Iowa mom facing these questions inspired Stephanie Radke, clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Iowa, to found the Iowa Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (IPQCC). IPQCC is responsible for improving communication and collaboration among groups addressing obstetrical and neonatal care in Iowa, especially in rural communities.
Andy Mink

Beyond “Not Urban”: Andy Mink on Serving Rural Communities

As part of the 2025–2026 Obermann Symposium, Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research (March 26–27), we’re excited to welcome Andy Mink, founding director of the Smithsonian’s Rural Initiative. In his keynote “More than ‘Not Urban’: Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People” on March 27, he'll explore how the Smithsonian is redefining itself as more than a destination in Washington, D.C., becoming a public service accessible to rural communities nationwide through collaborative, community-sourced partnerships that respond to local priorities and challenges. In advance of his visit, Obermann Program Coordinator Maria Torres Melgares spoke with Andy about his work and the ideas he’ll bring to the symposium.
work with us graphic

Seeking Humanities/Arts PhD Student for Program Coordinator Position, '26-'27

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies seeks an advanced (ABD) humanities or arts PhD student to work with Obermann staff to support programs and events and tell the stories of the exciting research projects and initiatives supported by the Center during the 2026–2027 school year.
collage of grad interns in the field

Six paid summer internships available to humanities grad students through new grant

As a graduate student in film and media, internships were a formative experience for Lauren Burrell Cox, associate director at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. They helped her define her values and identify meaningful professional roles where her skills could be put to use across the humanities ecosystem. Now, she’s received a grant from Humanities Without Walls (HWW) to provide six paid internship opportunities with local nonprofits for UI humanities graduate students this summer. “My goal is to make sure that humanities graduate students are equipped with robust, transferrable skills and access to pathways that lead to secure and fulfilling work,” says Cox. The three selected nonprofits have hosted successful internships and externships in the past, through the Obermann Center’s Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative and the Obermann Humanities Without Walls Faculty Externship. Each site will host two HWW interns this June and July.
Pervin's talk at IWP

The Texture of Memory: Pervin Saket's Project to Preserve Parsi Heritage

Imagine a small boat on large, dark sea. Imagine families of refugees, with small children and smaller bundles of belongings. Imagine them braving storms and starvation and shipwreck. It sounds like something from yesterday’s news report, but this historical exodus took place between the 8th and 11th centuries CE, when Arab Muslims conquered the once-expansive Persian Zoroastrian empire. Faced with religious persecution, groups of Zoroastrians escaped in boats and landed on the shores of Gujarat in India. Pervin Saket’s project as an Obermann International Fellow focuses on this community, her community, in modern-day India. Zoroastrianism, the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, is now practiced by only a handful of people, and that too is threatened by extinction. Saket says, “In the version I learned on my grandmother’s lap, the Parsis (literally “people of Pars or Persia”) were taken to the local king when they washed up on the shores of Gujarat. Suspicious of the foreigners, he showed them a bowl of milk filled to the brim, to indicate his land was full. The Parsi leader responded by sprinkling a few grains of sugar on the milk. I suspect that the king had a fondness for good metaphors."

Recent Events

Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories promotional image

Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories

Friday, April 4, 2025 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

Discover how Anne Frank’s story continues to shape conversations on empathy, education, and human rights in a compelling webinar featuring scholars from across the U.S.

Join the University  of Iowa (UI) Anne Frank Initiative, an International Programs affinity group, on Friday, April 4, 2025, at 10 a.m. (CDT) as they host an insightful and engaging webinar featuring several esteemed authors from the groundbreaking book, Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories (Routledge, 2025).

Hear...

The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore promotional image

The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore

Thursday, April 3, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Come to Prairie Lights Books for a special Darwin Day reading by Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic. Published in 2023 by local publisher Ice Cube Press and named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress, The Swine Republic provides extensive research and reportage on the truth behind Iowa's infamously poor water quality, which you "...won't get ... from Iowa’s agricultural and political leaders." (icecubepress.com) Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature...

Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom promotional image

Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom

Thursday, April 3, 2025 4:00pm
Jefferson Building

a Faculty First Responders Workshop
sponsored by POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry

At a time when academics are finding their work hyper-surveilled, banned from funding, or even scrubbed by AI, how can we vibrantly sustain our research, writing, and creative practice?

In this Faculty First Responders workshop, participants will learn concrete steps to support freedom of inquiry for themselves and others. Topics include digital security measures, reducing risk of extremist attacks...

“The Unfinished Symphony”: Graduate and Professional Student Research and Connection Lab  promotional image

“The Unfinished Symphony”: Graduate and Professional Student Research and Connection Lab 

Friday, March 28, 2025 10:30am to 2:30pm
University Capitol Centre

All are welcome to attend this informal symposium designed for graduate and professional students who are in the beginning or the middle of their research to share what they've got to a group of people who are not necessarily well-versed in their discipline. We encourage you to come and talk about your works still in progress, your experiments that are under construction, and where you think all of that might lead (no conclusive data necessary). This is an opportunity to practice sharing your...

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...

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.

Her forthcoming book, God Bless the Pill: Sexuality, Contraception, and American Religion, examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-20h century to the present.

This reading is co-sponsored by the Jewish...