Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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...

The Language of Trees: A Conversation with Katie Holten promotional image

The Language of Trees: A Conversation with Katie Holten

Thursday, October 1, 2026 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Old Capitol Museum
The Anne Frank Initiative will welcome internationally recognized artist and environmental advocate Katie Holten to Iowa City for a conversation about her acclaimed project and book The Language of Trees.
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News

Pressing Matters exhibition sign

Pressing Matters: Nichole Nidey and Laura Moser on stigma, art, and science

Reid Dempsey
“You have to dance,” says Professor Nichole Nidey (College of Public Health). “That’s the best way to get a good print.”
Stephanie Miracle

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

Reid Dempsey
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

Reid Dempsey
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

Reid Dempsey
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
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

Reid Dempsey
“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.

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Recent Events

The Hong Kong Lit Scene: Writing, Translating, & Publishing, A conversation with Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Wong Yi, and Jennifer Feeley promotional image

The Hong Kong Lit Scene: Writing, Translating, & Publishing, A conversation with Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Wong Yi, and Jennifer Feeley

Wednesday, October 18, 2023 1:30pm to 3:00pm
English-Philosophy Building

Please join us for a panel discussion with three internationally recognized leaders on the Hong Kong literary scene as they share their experiences with writing, editing, translating, and publishing in Hong Kong, and the challenges of literary translation and publishing in a wider global context. Followed by Q&A.

Tammy Lai-Ming HO 何麗明 (Fall ‘23 IWP resident; poet, scholar, editor, translator; Hong Kong) is the author of a story collection, an academic monograph on neo...
Book Matters: The Theory of Being at Prairie Lights promotional image

Book Matters: The Theory of Being at Prairie Lights

Monday, October 16, 2023 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate The Theory of Being: Practices for Transforming Self and Communities Across Difference, edited by a research team including Sherry K. Watt, Duhita Mahatmya, Milad Mohebali, and Charles Martin-Stanley II.

Monday, Oct. 16, 2023
7-8:30 p.m.
Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City
RSVP

The book presents a state-of-the-art, robust, and adaptable process, the Theory of Being, that offers strategies for...

2023 Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference promotional image

2023 Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference

Saturday, October 14 8:00am to Sunday, October 15, 2023 5:00pm
Lindquist Center

Learn more about the Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference at lsgsc.org

2023 Theme: Thriving in the Wilds

Last year we asked what we learned from the upheaval and changes the global pandemic triggered, and where the Learning Sciences would go from there. This year we ask a new question:

​What does it mean to thrive, instead of just surviving?

LSGSC is a gathering of emerging voices in the field of Learning Sciences. All graduate student work is welcome at LSGSC, but this year, we are...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2024) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2024)

Wednesday, October 11, 2023 5:00pm

The 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 or four 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...

Contemporary Approaches to Shakespeare promotional image

Contemporary Approaches to Shakespeare

Wednesday, October 11, 2023 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

2023 is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first collected edition of his works, and the first publication ever of plays including Macbeth and The Tempest. Why are we still reading and performing his works all these years later? How do we situate Shakespeare’s plays in a contemporary context? Join us for a roundtable discussion on Shakespeare in the 21st century. At this conversational panel, scholars will discuss Shakespeare in the context of race, prisons, and contemporary...

Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture-Jane Smiley promotional image

Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture-Jane Smiley

Thursday, October 5, 2023 7:00pm to 8:00pm
University of Iowa Main Library

The Department of English welcomes Ida Cordelia Beam Speaker, Jane Smiley, to speak on Thursday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m.
Jane is a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and alumni of the University of Iowa's Department of English.
A reception will follow.

Her visit is made possible with the support of the Provost's office and the Department of English.