Upcoming Events

Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat
Monday, May 12 to Friday, May 16, 2025 (all day)
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025!
Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
Walking Tour of Campus Trees
Tuesday, May 13, 2025 1:00pm
Join Urban Forest Supervisor Andy Dahl for a Campus Tree Tour on Tuesday, May 13, 1:00 p.m., meet on the east side of Macbride Hall (entry to Museum of Natural History). Your UIRA Program Committee host is Nancy Langguth, nancylangguth@uiowa.edu.On the UI campus there are almost 9,000 trees, comprising over 350 species and countless cultivars in maintained areas. Of note are two Conifer Reference Gardens as recognized by the American Conifer Society, a Literary Grove featuring trees with...

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025
Friday, May 23, 2025 5:00pm
This program offers companionship and accountability to University of Iowa artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of academic writing project (ex. academic articles/essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, nonfiction) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.In Summer 2025, two write-on-site groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St...
UIRA Annual Meeting
Friday, June 27, 2025 1:00pm
Save the Date!Join us for the UIRA Annual Meeting on Friday, June 27 in Room 2520-D at the University Capitol Center (2nd floor of the UCC). Lunch and social time begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by the business meeting at 1:00 p.m. Come celebrate the accomplishments of the past year with fellow members!If you’re unable to join in person, the event will also be available on Zoom. Watch your inbox for a registration email coming soon!

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)
Wednesday, September 3, 2025 9:00am
Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends — an Obermann/OVPR Book Completion Workshop — supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist faculty members in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Read more about the program.Interested applicants are invited to learn more about...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium
Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders, and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium
Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders, and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
Note: Videos of past lectures may be available on the EFC Lecture Series page.
Past Events

EFC Lecture Series: From Language History to History as it Happens: A Sociolinguist in the Migration Crisis - Mercedes Niño-Murcia
Thursday, April 17, 2025 4:00pm
Professor Emerita Niño-Murcia will discuss big and small ways in which language politics generate and perpetuate North American inequalities.

EFC Lecture: Mary Trachsel - Going Feral: Animal Studies Scholarship in Retirement and Retrospect
Thursday, February 20, 2025 4:00pm
This lecture traces Professor Trachsel's studies on cross-species communication from analyses of ape language research in the early 2000’s to investigation of other interspecies language types, such as horse whispering and the telepathy professed by animal communicators. Her current research on human-wild animal relationships has entailed wolf-tracking in Yellowstone, a “women and wolves” workshop in the Boundary Waters, observation of feral horses out west, and visits to wildlife "encounter"...
EFC Lecture: Why Do We Want to Believe in Cross-Species Utopias? - Teresa Mangum, PhD
Thursday, November 14, 2024 4:00pm
The internet mews, barks, growls, and hisses with alleged evidence of cross-species attachment. These stories — from Genesis to Victorian animal painter Edwin Landseer’s narrative paintings to the latest videos and memes — entice audiences with the promise that we can bridge and bond across species difference. But they also document what it costs animals for humans to be near them.
~ Sponsored by the Emeritus Faculty Council and the Office of the Provost ~
EFC Lecture: VR Research in Three Parts: My Life in Virtual Reality - Joe Kearney
Thursday, October 17, 2024 4:00pm
This talk will give an overview of three research initiatives that use VR technology. First, a series of studies that used large screen pedestrian and bicycling simulators to examine how two people coordinate their decisions and actions when crossing a stream of traffic. The studies reveal the powerful influence that others have on how we make consequential decisions in performing routine but potentially dangerous activities. Second, a series of studies looking at how mobile technology can help...

EFC Lecture: Edwin Stone - Dream No Small Dreams
Thursday, September 12, 2024 4:00pm to 5:30pm
This lecture will detail our 38-year journey toward the restoration of vision for people blinded by inherited retinal disease.
Edwin M. Stone, MD, PhD, is Professor of Ophthalmology. Director of the Iowa Institute for Vision Research, and the Seamans-Hauser Chair of Molecular Ophthalmology.
~ Sponsored by the Emeritus Faculty Council and the Office of the Provost ~

Language and Health: Language Abilities and Children’s Well-Being
Thursday, April 25, 2024 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Bruce Tomblin, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Language is often viewed as one of the signal attributes of humans. It is a universal property of humans that is acquired easily during early childhood with no formal instruction. During this time some children are more adept at language learning than others. These individual differences in language development have the potential of affecting children’s well-being. This talk will provide an overview of a...

The Search for Race: Civil War Medicine and Science
Thursday, March 21, 2024 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Leslie uses the social and cultural history of Civil War medicine and science to probe the question of how and why anti-Black racism survived the destruction of slavery. Leslie's talk will describe how white Northerners—the U.S. Sanitary Commission and Army medical personnel—conducted wartime research aimed at proving Black medical and biological inferiority. She argues that this research not only led to the mistreatment of Black soldiers and civilians, it also promoted the notion of white...
EFC Lecture—Iowa Faces the 1960s—Charles Connerly, PhD
Thursday, February 22, 2024 4:00pm to 5:30pm
As Iowa entered the 1960s, it faced issues that reflected the transition from an agricultural, rural state to one that had become majority urban with consequent tensions between its urban and rural communities—tensions that continue to this day. At the same time, Iowa’s food-based economy seemed increasingly out of sync with a national economy driven proportionately less by the consumption of food and more by growing consumer demand for homes, cars, televisions, hi-fis, and clothes—items that...