Co-Sponsors
The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
The UI’s Obermann Center for Advanced Studies serves the research mission of the University of Iowa. The Center is a convening space dedicated to debate and discovery. Its grants for University of Iowa artists and researchers support imaginative collaborations and multi-disciplinary exploration. Its programming connects scholars across campus and engages the larger public in the ambitious, illuminating, and transformative work of the artists and scholars it serves.
The purpose of the annual Obermann Humanities Symposium is to explore an important humanities topic that highlights UI scholars and scholarship and includes both UI and visiting participants. Recent symposia have explored the role of the humanities in understanding and communicating the new age known as the Anthropocene, celebrating and forming a cohesive vision for the study of Latinos in the Midwest, and an examination of Don Quixote as one of literature’s most famous exemplars of parody and plagiarism.
University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art
The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, established in 1969, is one of the leading university art collections in the country. Approximately 15,500 objects constitute diverse collections that include paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, ceramics, textiles, jade, and silver. The Elliott Collection of post-Impressionist European art includes paintings by Braque, de Chirico, Kandinsky, Léger, Marc, Matisse, Picasso, and Vlaminck, among others. The Stanley Collection of African Art is part of one of the most significant collections of African art in the country which today numbers over 2,000 objects. Other significant areas of the collections include nearly 6,000 prints spanning the history of Western printmaking, several hundred ceramics (primarily American studio ceramics), almost 2,000 Pre-Columbian objects, a significant ancient Chinese collection, as well as small but superb groups of ancient Etruscan and Roman art, and Native American ledger drawings. The museum has a large and important collection of twentieth-century American paintings and sculpture, including two of the most well-known works in the field of painting (both given to the museum by the School of Art & Art History [SAAH]): Max Beckmann’s triptych, Karneval, purchased by the faculty in 1946 when he arrived in the US, and Jackson Pollock’s Mural, painted in 1943 for Peggy Guggenheim which she offered to give to the SAAH in 1948 and which finally arrived in the collection in 1951.
The Ida Beam Visiting Professorships Program
The Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorships Program was established in 1978-79 with the income from a bequest to the University by the late Ida Cordelia Beam of Vinton. Past visits by distinguished teachers and scholars from the United States and abroad greatly enrich our instructional and research programs. The Ida Cordelia Beam visiting professorships are a source of intellectual stimulation for students and faculty, and provide an opportunity to bring new perspectives in knowledge and teaching to our campus.
University of Iowa Department of English
Since 1861, the Department of English has promoted a rich tradition of reading, writing, and critical thinking. Graduates of the BA, MA, MFA, and PhD programs in English have made meaningful contributions in the fields of education, the arts, business, the nonprofit sector, and government—shaping the world in which they live with the understanding, compassion, and communication skills they gained as English majors. The Department’s gifted and dedicated faculty possess a diverse range of interests and specializations, and the Department has developed a curriculum that facilitates a comprehensive exploration of people, places, and topics from all eras and cultures, linking to numerous other disciplines.
