The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14.

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14.

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14.

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14.

The Writing Center's annual Summer Dissertation Camp takes place via Zoom in the first two weeks of June. Applications are due by 5 p.m. Sunday, May 14.

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...

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...

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 is an interdisciplinary conference focusing on the intersections of critical and creative approaches to writing both within and beyond the academy.

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. 

Bio:Charmaine A. Nelson is a Provost Professor of Art History in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and Director of the Slavery North Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 2020-2022, she was a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Transatlantic Black Diasporic Art and Community Engagement at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University in Halifax, Canada, where she founded the first-ever institute focused on the study of Canadian Slavery. She also...

Please join us for our last event with some of the most influential artists today, “the Hernandez Bros,” together with Natalia Hernandez and scholars Qiana Whitted (University of South Carolina) and Darieck Scott (UC Berkeley). We will enjoy our guests’ presentations at the Iowa City Public Library as well as a variety of events. On Friday, we will play the Love and Rockets: The Great American Comic Book at Filmscene, a documentary that celebrates 40 years of the artists’ career. This is part of...

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 explore new work and to share their own research, to organize a symposium, and to develop grant proposals.  This program allows participants from across the campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a moment when cross...

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...

This is a public lecture by Kim TallBear, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society, University of Alberta.

This is a public lecture by Dr. Patricia Brennan, Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mt. Holyoke College and an expert in the role of sexual conflict in evolution as well as the evolution of animal genital morphology and function.

Seminar lecture by Dr. Kim TallBear

Seminar lecture by Dr. Patricia Brennan, Mount Holyoke College.

This three-week series at FilmScene celebrates the pioneering work of Black women filmmakers from the 1970s to the present.

Come to FilmScene for a literary-themed selection of short films by and about poets. The evening will include Maya Angelou's directorial debut, Cheryl Fabio's cinematic portrait of her mother, the poet/performer/musician Sarah Webster Fabio, and Michelle Parkerson's recent documentary about the Enikalley Coffeehouse, a key space for Black LGBTQ artmaking and activism in 1980s Washington, D.C. Cheryl Fabio and Michelle Parkerson will join us by Zoom for a post-screening conversation moderated by...

This event will feature a screening of Cette Maison, directed by Miryam Cahrles followed by an introduction and post-screening conversation with Yasmina Price, Department of African Americans Studies at Yale University. 

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Janaína Oliveira is a curator and researcher who holds a doctorate in history and was a Fulbright scholar at the Center for African Studies at Howard University (USA). She is one of the founders of FICINE—Fórum Itinerante de Cinema Negro. Her research focuses on Black Brazilian and aphrodiasporic cinemas and also on African cinematographies. She has served as a...

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Janaína Oliveira will present "Frequencies of Kalunga."  Kalunga: a concept originating from Bantu cultures with multiple meanings. For some, the line that marks the limits between the worlds of the living and the ancestors, the line of the horizon and of saudade (longing), which divides but also aggregates. It can also be a portal or the core of the vital energy...

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Christopher Harris makes films and video installations that read African American historiography through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. His work employs manually and photo-chemically altered appropriated moving images, staged re-enactments of archival artifacts and interrogations of documentary conventions. His current project is a series of...

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Please note that this event has been moved from the Stanley Art Museum to 101 BCSB. Join us for Cauleen Smith's captivating audio-visual performance, Black Utopia LP. Combining 35mm slide projection with the artist's vinyl LP, this 90-minute "film without film" offers a unique cinematic experience. Emerging from...

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Please note that this event has been moved from the Stanley Art Museum to 101 BCSB. With her artistic practice, Aline Motta (b. 1974, Niterói, Brazil) seeks to point out and fill in the gaps in her own family history as a result of colonial erasure. Her videos, photographs, installations, and performances are based on speculative studies that mix archival...

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award:. Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Following the opening of Brazilian visual artist Aline Motta’s exhibition at the Stanley Museum, the artist Aline Motta and Brazilian curator and scholar Tatiana Carvalho Costa will share their thoughts on the works exhibited and discuss the uses of speculative fiction and archive to piece together a possible family...

Join us in the Pride Lounge (Iowa Memorial Union Room 209) from noon to 5 p.m. to spend time with community, honoring this important day. Follow our Instagram (@uiowapridehouse) for further TDOV engagement!

This event is part of the 2023 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Tatiana Carvalho Costa is a curator and teacher. She is a doctoral student at the Federal University of Minas Gerais where she researches Afro-Brazilian epistemologies and Black Brazilian Cinema, in particular the recent production of short films. She works as programmer and juror of festivals and recently joined the curatorial team of the Mostra de Cinema de...

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...

Introduction to the Met Opera streaming of Verdi's "Falstaff" on Sat., April 1

This event is part of the 2023 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora. Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora brings together filmmakers, artists, scholars, and critics from across the globe in order to inaugurate a practice of collective attunement. How can we best attune ourselves to the waves set in motion by this new cinema? How does Brazil’s current...

This is a keynote Lecture by Janaína Oliveira, Federal Instituto of Rio de Janeiro. Introduction by Christopher Harris.  

2022-23 UI Obermann Humanities Symposium & International Programs Major Projects Award: Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora From March 30 to April 1, "Frequências: Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Cinema & the Black Diaspora" will feature filmmakers, translators, and film scholars from the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. Organized by Christopher Harris (Cinematic Arts) with partnership from Cristiane Lira (University of Georgia) and Brazilian filmmaker Janaína Oliveira, the...

Co-sponsored by the Department of Dance, Obermann Center, and Public Space One.

Experiential learning is a cornerstone of the Humanities for the Public Good PhD as we create a program centered around the applied humanities. Eight internships are available for summer 2023 for UI PhD students in the humanities or humanities-adjacent disciplines. Interns will spend two summer months working with and for a campus or community partner on a specific project or area of focus. In addition to their work on site, interns also attend weekly cohort meetings and complete assignments...

Is misogyny part of Islam? In the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad took pains to address both male Muslims and female Muslims, because both have the same religious duties. The Five Pillars of Islam apply to both of them. The Quran states explicitly that men and women are equal before God. During the seventh century, women could own businesses and fight battles.

The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning at the graduate level that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities with both a social challenge and skills valued in multiple career settings. The Lab grant will be awarded to one or more faculty members from humanities or humanities...

With generous financial support from the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Obermann Center will offer the Obermann Center Writing & Research Workshop June 12 to 16, 2023. Faculty writing about their research across all disciplines and ranks are invited to apply. At this weeklong event, participants will have the opportunity to begin summer by deeply engaging a work-in-progress with the support of individualized feedback, workshops, and time to write in solitude and in community at...

On Thursday, March 2, at 2:30 p.m. CST, Professors Tara Bynum (English, CLAS) and Kabria Baumgartner (History and Africana Studies, Northeastern University) will discuss Bynum's new book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America (University of Illinois Press), which tells the stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. Bynum, a 2021 recipient of the Book Ends: Obermann/OVPR Book Completion Workshop...

A webinar-style conversation with three key figures (Kathy Allen, J.D.; Cristina Alonso, CPW, DrPH; Judy Norsigian) involved in the groundbreaking Our Bodies Ourselves, which provides accurate and inclusive information on health, sexuality, and reproductive justice.

This presentation discusses the use of Latine/x digital archives about the Midwest, as critical digital humanities projects that highlight the long history of the Latinx/e in this region. Through decolonial practices of using oral history, ethnography, and performances, I discuss the importance of building a counter-archive of Latinx experiences.

The Obermann Center seeks a graduate student to support the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities for the Public Good (HPG), under the supervision of the Director of the Obermann Center, who is the Principal Investigator on the project. The ideal candidate should be an outstanding scholar-teacher who is interested in conducting and sharing research on the larger ecosystem of the humanities and diverse careers for humanities scholars and learning the skills necessary to be a successful...

Part storytelling, part lecture, and part live documentary film, Sarah Kanouse’s solo performance “My Electric Genealogy” explores the shifting cultures and politics of energy in Los Angeles and the American West through the lens of her own family. 

Join us in conversation with journalist, comics artist, and Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Joe Sacco, (Safe Area Gorazde, Paying the Land) interviewed by Rachel Williams for a talk about race, war, identity but also about his personal creative process and the art of comics.  This is part of a three-day event devoted to "Drawing Panels and Crossing Borders: Negotiating Self and Other in Comics" with MariNaomi, Candida Rifkind, Jorge Santos, and Jose Alaniz. Organized by the...

For the next "Racial Reckoning Through Comics" event, we will engage in conversation with artists MariNaomi and Joe Sacco as well as scholars Candida Rifkind, Jorge Santos, and José Alaniz to discuss how colonial dynamics are involved in racialization processes. From the global to the local, from international conflicts to the everyday life in times of peace, our artists’ stories and our scholars’ analyses will explore how the grammar of comics can imagine, write, and draw anti-racist and anti...

Note: This event has been canceled. Please email obermann-center@uiowa.edu if you would like more information about the Humanities Lab opportunity. The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning at the graduate level that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities with both a social...

Professor Anna Barker (Asian & Slavic Languages & Literatures, UI) will share her enthusiasm for the music of Mozart and the Cedar Rapids Opera production of Cosí fan tutte: The Soap Opera, which will be performed on the following dates:  Jan. 20, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22, 2023 at 2 p.m. At the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids (123 3rd Ave SE). The lecture is organized by the interdisciplinary Opera Studies Forum (via the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies), and is free and open to all.

This series of two workshops will focus on best feedback and commenting practices to help students improve their writing and their learning.