Upcoming Events
Humanities Write-In
Thursday, April 9, 2026 2:00pm to 4:00pm
The Graduate College has joined the Graduate Student Senate and the Graduate & Professional Student Government to encourage a week-long celebration of our graduate students April 6–10, 2026.
Celebrate Graduate Student Appreciation Week with dedicated writing time and meaningful community. Join us for a focused Humanities Write-In facilitated by Grad Ambassadors, designed to offer structure, accountability, and connection for Iowa’s graduate and professional students working on any kind of...
Targeting the Psychological Roots, Not Branches, of Vaccine Confidence
Friday, April 10, 2026 3:00pm to 3:45pm
Aaron Scherer examines the psychological roots of vaccine confidence and how to communicate more effectively about science.
The DTP Vaccine and Narratives of Injury
Friday, April 10, 2026 3:45pm to 4:30pm
Tara Smith explores the history of the DTP vaccine and the narratives that shape public perception of vaccine injury.
Global Vaccines in a Time of Climate Change, Megacities, and Antiscience
Friday, April 10, 2026 4:30pm to 5:15pm
Peter Hotez addresses the global challenges facing vaccination efforts, including climate change, urbanization, and organized antiscience movements.
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Upcoming Application Deadlines
Upcoming Application Deadlines
News
Training Librarians to Preserve Community Memory
Over the past two decades, say Micah Bateman and Lindsay Mattock, recipients of a 2021 Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grant, library and information science (LIS) graduate programs have privileged information science, data science, and computer science—at several universities even merging with computer science departments—over human- and community-centered practices central to the mission of library and archival sciences. One such practice involves the management of community memory records—everything from genealogical documents to newspaper archives to oral histories. Bateman and Mattock note that at small and rural libraries, these records often go “unmanaged and underused, and reflect only the narratives of majority or dominant populations” because the librarians working with those collections have been largely neglected by LIS training programs that privilege “big data” paradigms.
Apply for the Summer '23 Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Workshop
Launched in 2015 as an initiative of the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium, this annual workshop welcomes 30 participants each summer from higher education institutions across the United States. HWW Summer Workshop Fellows work in a variety of academic disciplines. They are scholars and practitioners who bring experience in community building, museum curation, filmmaking, radio programming, social media, project management, research, writing, and teaching....
A Project Postponed: Scholars Take Interdisciplinary Grant Project on the Road
When the pandemic postponed Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and GWSS, University of Iowa) and Shui-yin Sharon Yam's (Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, University of Kentucky) Obermann residency for their Interdisciplinary Research Grant project last summer, they decided to postpone their work until they could meet in person. Though the Center remained closed to faculty this...
John Rapson: Looking Back at a Generous Collaborator
In the summer of 2014, it wasn't uncommon to find two faculty members padding around the Obermann Center in bare feet as they dashed from their upstairs offices to the downstairs library to watch movies. While it appeared to be a scholarly form of summer camp, John Rapson (School of Music) and Paul Kalina (Theatre) were deep in research as they broke down how music and movement interacted in old...
Using Virtual Reality to Train Math Teachers
Most children in the U.S. struggle to learn mathematics, with 50 to 75% of students scoring below proficient on achievement tests in grades 4 through 12. Children with disabilities such as autism tend to fare even worse. Clearly, math teachers must be equipped to educate students who require varying levels of support—but, for the most part, they aren’t. Logistical issues inherent in conventional...
Summer Interns at the Halfway Mark: A growing tomato, a gift from Brokaw, and nudity in the archives
It is around the halfway point of so many projects when the work is most difficult. The newness has worn off; the end is still out of reach, but close enough to give us an uneasy reminder of how much is yet to be completed. This is the experience of the ten UI graduate students who are at the midway point of their Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internships. For eight weeks, they are working...
