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Apply

Book Ends applications are due Wednesday, September 23, 2026 (5:00 p.m.). Click for eligibility and application procedures.

 

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 with significant research responsibilities 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 honorarium for two external senior, active scholars ($500 for each). We will also ask one University of Iowa senior faculty member to participate, as an opportunity to learn about and support the work of a colleague. The Director of the Obermann Center or a representative for the Center will work with successful applicants to select the outside reviewers and organize the workshop. Usually, the University of Iowa colleague will act a facilitator, using the guide we have developed for authors and readers. External reviewers will be asked to provide substantive written comments, and the Zoom workshop will be recorded for the author’s use during the revision process. Our goal is for each author to leave the workshop with concrete suggestions for revision, advice about appropriate presses, and a timeline that will lead to a revised manuscript ready for presses to review within six months.

We will host workshops for up to four UI faculty members each academic year. This project supports faculty members completing first books within a timeframe that aligns with deadlines for tenure review, associate professors on the verge of seeking promotion to full professor, and full professors with mature drafts of monographs.

From previous awardees:

"My Book Ends conference provided me with the feedback necessary to revise my manuscript and land a contract at University of California Press. So grateful for this program! There are so few opportunities for this kind of feedback in the pre-tenure book writing process." —Emerson Cram, Communication Studies & GWSS

"The workshop was tremendous. What an opportunity to have long-admired senior scholars and brilliant Iowa colleagues come together to discuss my work! The conversation was deeply rich, and I have a wealth of ideas about next steps. It was clear that everyone involved had participated in a similar workshop and knew well the genre. The comments were well pitched for next steps." —Brady G'Sell, Anthropology & GWSS

"I really liked how the facilitator started discussing my book as a whole and then moved on to each individual chapter for discussion. It was also very helpful to hear the positive and less positive aspects of the manuscript in a professional, constructive manner. I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere created from the beginning of the workshop and the commitment the three reviewers showed to making my future book a great one!" —Ana Rodriguez-Rodriguez, Spanish & Portuguese

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Resources

A Guide to the Obermann/OVPR Book Ends Workshops: Advice for Faculty Readers and Manuscript Authors

collage of photos of past recipients of the Book Ends award

Awardees

Recipients of the Book Ends award.

In the News

photo of Everard Hall eating lunch in a cemetery (photo credit: Dessert, 2015, Thalassa Raasch)

Witnessing the Gravedigger

Who’s your local gravedigger? Do you have one? The residents of Cherryfield, Maine, do—and it’s not the dirty, shadow-clad figure you’re picturing. It’s local resident Everard Hall, smiling and ball-capped in a plaid work shirt. There’s a harmonica in his pocket and dancing boots in his pickup. Everard (pronounced “EVer-ard”) is one of the few remaining gravediggers in the U.S. who dig by hand—and he does it year-round across northeastern Maine. Using picks, shovels, chains, and winches to haul out rocks, ice, hardpan, roots, clay, and sand, he insists on doing the job with care and precision. It’s not surprising that UI photography professor Thalassa Raasch feels the exact same way about documenting Everard’s work. Her in-progress collection of photos and essays, In Over My Head, documents the unexpected beauty of Everard’s work as a gravedigger and explores the profound thresholds between solitude and community, life and death.
Marissa Good (left) and Selveyah Gamblin (right) at the Student Undergraduate Research Festival, April 2023 (photo by Louise Seamster)

Data Justice for Flint: Seamster Leads Effort to Build Accessible Archive with Humanities Without Walls Grand Research Challenge Project

For seven years, the Obermann Center has been a partner in the Mellon-funded Humanities Without Walls consortium led by Professor Antoinette Burton at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Our graduate students have attended HWW’s Career Diversity Summer Workshops, and several faculty members have worked with cross-institutional Grand Research Challenge teams. This year, we are delighted that Assistant Professor Louise Seamster (Departments of Sociology & Criminology and African American Studies) was selected as the P.I. of a team focused on "The Flint Water Disaster Public Archive." The ”Flint Water Disaster Public Archive” will re-home public data that has been largely inaccessible to Flint communities—a form of data justice that is of urgent relevance to the history, present, and future of those communities. The project is a collaboration among the University of Iowa, University of Michigan–Flint, and the Flint Democracy Defense League. Below is Obermann Assistant Director Lauren Burrell Cox’s interview with Louise Seamster about the project.
Screenshot of a fantastical world produced in the video game Minecraft.

Book Ends with Chris Goetz

The Books Ends—Obermann/OVPR Book Completion Workshop has provided support for more than a dozen University of Iowa scholars to host working conversations about their manuscripts in process. Intended for faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion, the award brings two senior scholars to campus (or to our virtual campus) for a candid, constructive, half-day workshop on the faculty member’s book manuscript. Two senior faculty members from the UI are also invited to participate as an opportunity to learn about and support the work of a colleague. 

Signing Music, Gender in The Iliad, and Civil Rights Performance: Three faculty receive book completion awards

Three UI faculty have received Book Ends awards to complete manuscripts. A jointly sponsored opportunity of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends supports faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award, which is now in its third year, is designed to help faculty members...
Open book with butterflies fluttering above it

Book Ends: New program helps faculty finish book projects

Bringing a book to the finish line of publication is one of the most challenging tasks faced by scholars in disciplines where monographs are the main vehicle for sharing discoveries. At the Obermann Center, we hope to smooth the path by helping create an inspiring, supportive audience of experts for authors in they head into the final stretch of completing a book project....

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