Upcoming Events

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression promotional image

Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Poetry and Music for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression

Saturday, September 26, 2026 3:00pm
Voxman Music Building

“Eleanor Waltzes” honors First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt through performances of songs and poetry created and sent to her by American women. The event will also feature an exhibit of materials from the Iowa Women’s Archives and a “making do” reception with 1930s recipes. “Eleanor Waltzes” is part of Sounding the Nation at 250, a series of commemorative concerts surrounding the U.S. Semiquincentennial sponsored by the Society for American Music.

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, 3 p.m.

Recital Hall, Voxman...

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Junior Faculty and Graduate Student Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

University of Iowa junior faculty and graduate students at all stages are invited to join Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at the University of Pennsylvania Press—for a light breakfast and a conversation about turning an article, thesis, or dissertation into a book on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 9–10:30 a.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies library. Please bring any questions you have about that process or about scholarly publishing in general.

Register by Wednesday, September 30.

Biggins is...

Registration Deadline: Undergraduate Career Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Registration Deadline: Undergraduate Career Session with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

Interested in a career in publishing? In this session on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at noon at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press, will discuss his career path and editorial work. This is an opportunity for students to hear directly from a distinguished professional about the realities of the field and to gain insight into how to prepare for a career in publishing. Pizza will be provided!

Please register by Wednesday, September 30.

B...

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

RSVP Deadline: AMA with Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

UI faculty, students, and staff are invited to attend ask-me-anything group discussions with Walter Biggins—editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press—at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 1 at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Questions might address finding an editor, pitching a book, writing a book proposal, how the publishing process works, etc.

There will be two back-to-back discussions; you may attend one or both.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, September 30.

Free and open to all.

Bi...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books Ends supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist UI faculty members of all ranks and with significant research responsibilities to turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour virtual workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

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...

News

Stephanie Miracle

UI professor Stephanie Miracle on the demands and rewards of interdisciplinary work

Stephanie Miracle’s ensemble is large. Mechanical engineers, musicians, hydroscientists, robots, zoological specimens, filmmakers, parking ramps, at least one professor of 18th-century literature, and the Iowa River all have found a place in collaborations honored this year by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.
Walter Biggins

Six questions for Walter Biggins, our 2026 editor-in-residence

You’ve worked for a number of robust institutions in the last fifteen years. Do you feel the role of a university press has changed in campus life since you began your career? If so, what do you see as the most important ways that presses can engage and support their intellectual ecosystems today, beyond publishing books?

I started in university-press publishing in September 1999, so the number is closer to (ulp!) 27 years. In that timespan, I’ve worked for three presses: University Press of Mississippi, University of Georgia Press, and now University of Pennsylvania Press (Penn Press).

Amy Hildreth Chen

Meet our new assistant director, Amy Chen

Hi, Amy! So happy to sit down with you after your first few weeks on Church Street. I was hoping we could talk about Iowa first—it’s played a significant role in your academic history. Could you talk a little about your journey and how you’ve come to the Obermann Center?

Sure! I went to Iowa as an undergraduate, double majoring in English and political science. I was drawn to campus from my hometown of Wichita, Kansas, by Iowa’s reputation as the Writing University. I did all sorts of things as an undergraduate. I was a resident assistant, Writing Fellow, editor-in-chief of the undergraduate literary magazine, and research assistant on top of writing an honors thesis and taking graduate classes in English. After graduation, I really needed a break! I went away to travel, then pursued my PhD at Emory University and completed a postdoc at the University of Alabama.

IDRG group working

Variants of Uncertain Significance

“I suppose what’s always speaking to me in the back of my mind is my mother,” says Benjamin Darbro. “She’s really the one who inspired this problem solving.” My question to University of Iowa professors John Manak, of the Department of Biology (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and Darbro, of the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics (Carver College of Medicine), was about the nature of their work: What is your relationship to complexity?
headshot dempsey

Meet Reid Dempsey

Hi, Reid! You’re the new program coordinator at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (OCAS). Can you explain your role?

Hi! Certainly. It’s a blend of responsibilities, but mostly communications support. I help with interviews, social media, outreach, and recordkeeping. I’m also learning from the Obermann staff—Jenna, Erin, Amy, and Luis—how an organism like OCAS supports research and intellectual life inside and outside the University of Iowa. Their combined experience and skill set can be a little dazzling, and the work feels special. Not every school has something like the Obermann Center on campus, dedicated to sharing resources, building networks, and thinking about the best ways to make things happen.

Bella Spilotro

Behind the Zines: Learning from Artists at Public Space One

This summer, I had the pleasure of interning at Public Space One (PS1), an artist-led, community-driven contemporary art center, for eight weeks as a student intern supporting grant administration, research, documentation, and publication development for the multi-year Alongside/Banned but Not Silenced project.

Recent Events

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Zeinabu irene Davis's CYCLES (1989) and COMPENSATION (1999) -- Pre-Screening Drinks/Dessert Reception & Post-Screening Conversation promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens — Zeinabu irene Davis's CYCLES (1989) and COMPENSATION (1999) -- Pre-Screening Drinks/Dessert Reception & Post-Screening Conversation

Monday, April 10, 2023 6:30pm to 9:45pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This special program, part of OUT OF THE ARCHIVE: BLACK WOMEN BEHIND THE LENS, will feature two films by Zeinabu irene Davis. Davis's Compensation (1999), her debut feature film, presents two unique African-American love stories between a Deaf woman and a hearing man. Inspired by a poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar, this moving narrative shares their struggle to overcome racism, disability and discrimination. An important film on African-American Deaf culture, Davis incorporates silent film...

Dr. Kim TallBear: The Vanishing Indian Speaks Back: Race, Genomics, and Indigenous Rights promotional image

Dr. Kim TallBear: The Vanishing Indian Speaks Back: Race, Genomics, and Indigenous Rights

Saturday, April 8, 2023 11:30am to 12:15pm
Phillips Hall

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) (she/her) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast...

Oddball Science: Why Studies of Weird Evolutionary Phenomena Are Crucial. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College promotional image

Oddball Science: Why Studies of Weird Evolutionary Phenomena Are Crucial. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College

Saturday, April 8, 2023 10:45am to 11:30am
Phillips Hall

Patricia (Patty) Brennan is interested in the morphological evolution of genital morphology in vertebrates and the mechanisms that drive genital diversification, sexual conflict in particular. She has a BSc in Marine Biology from her native Colombia, where she studied the cardiac physiology of marine mammals. She went on to work in the Galapagos Islands aboard a research vessel (R/V Odyssey). Brennan completed her PhD dissertation at Cornell University, where she studied the breeding biology and...

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta promotional image

Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation: Decolonization in Science and Technology. Dr. Kim TallBear, University of Alberta

Friday, April 7, 2023 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Biology Building East

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) (she/her) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying genome science disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast Media...

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College promotional image

Studying Female Morphology. Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mt. Holyoke College

Friday, April 7, 2023 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Biology Building East

Patricia (Patty) Brennan is interested in the morphological evolution of genital morphology in vertebrates and the mechanisms that drive genital diversification, sexual conflict in particular. She has a BSc in Marine Biology from her native Colombia, where she studied the cardiac physiology of marine mammals. She went on to work in the Galapagos Islands aboard a research vessel (R/V Odyssey). Brennan completed her PhD dissertation at Cornell University, where she studied the breeding biology and...

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens promotional image

Out of the Archive: Black Women Behind the Lens

Wednesday, April 5 7:00pm to Saturday, April 22, 2023 9:00pm
FilmScene (Chauncey)

This three-week screening and discussion series celebrates the pioneering work of Black women filmmakers from the 1970s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the first-ever Black women’s film festival, the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, the series features rare and recently restored works from groundbreaking directors including Maya Angelou, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Kathleen Collins, Monica Freeman, and Zeinabu irene Davis, among others. The majority of the screenings...