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

“You have to dance,” says Professor Nichole Nidey (College of Public Health). “That’s the best way to get a good print.” Nidey is speaking to a young guest of the first-ever Pressing Matters exhibition, a girl of seven or eight. Laid on the floor of Close House, the downtown home of Public Space One, is a blank t-shirt and an inked linocut plate. Together, laughing, Nidey and her new young friend take turns to hop on the plate and dance their design into being.
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 (gulp!) 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.

Recent Events

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2023 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Tuesday, May 30, 2023 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Students meet in discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics.

Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14. See writingcenter.uiowa.edu/graduate-student-programs for more details.

Please note that we have a limited number of spaces, so priority is given to students who are post-proposal, have mostly completed...

Wide Lens: Memory promotional image

Wide Lens: Memory

Friday, May 5, 2023 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Stanley Museum of Art

What is forgotten? What is remembered? How reliable are our recollections? What ethical questions could or should guide how we engage with others’ memories? Join us at the Stanley Museum of Art as six scholar-artists reflect on memory from the perspective of various disciplines.

This is the second gathering in the UI's new Wide Lens series, in which researchers, scholars, and artists from across the university briefly present their work on a shared topic of interest, pecha kucha–style, at the...

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2023) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Faculty Fellows (Fall 2023)

Tuesday, May 2, 2023 5:00pm

Obermann Center Faculty Fellows (formerly Fellows-in-Residence) fully devote themselves to projects within an interdisciplinary community. The program supports artists, researchers, and scholars during periods when focus and feedback are crucial. The program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...

Finding Funding: Wise and Witty Ways to Search — An Obermann Get It Done workshop with Mary Blackwood promotional image

Finding Funding: Wise and Witty Ways to Search — An Obermann Get It Done workshop with Mary Blackwood

Thursday, April 27, 2023 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual

Do you have a great idea for a project but need some funding to accomplish it? Learn about how committing an hour of your week can pay off! In this session, Mary Blackwood, Senior Sponsored Research Specialist at the UI Division of Sponsored Programs, will talk about how to set yourself up for grant-seeking success, how to manage roadblocks on the journey, and why anyone—from experienced faculty to newbie grad student—can increase their chances of getting a grant award by finding the right...

Craft, Critique, Culture Conference promotional image

Craft, Critique, Culture Conference

Thursday, April 20 to Saturday, April 22, 2023 (all day)
English-Philosophy Building

Our embeddedness within a more-than-human world is one part of what defines us as human. In the 1940s, Iowa-based environmentalist Aldo Leopold offered a land-based ethic: “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.” We hope to hear papers pursuing questions within and adjacent to the environment, broadly conceived. We are interested in how life is becoming less livable and for whom that is happening...

University of Iowa Lecture Committee: Jelani Cobb - "The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today" promotional image

University of Iowa Lecture Committee: Jelani Cobb - "The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today"

Wednesday, April 19, 2023 7:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

Please join Jelani Cobb, author and Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, for his lecture "The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today."

All University lectures are free and open to the public. 

This lecture is sponsored by the following University of Iowa Departments and Programs: African American Studies, American Studies, Cinematic Arts, CLAS Dean's Office, Communication Studies, History, Magid center for Writing, English, Obermann Center, and the Provost's Office. 

Canceled