The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (OCAS) is an intellectual community that supports artists, scholars, and researchers—independently and in cross-disciplinary collaborations—as they unearth the past, explain and engage the present, and invent the future.
Serving the research mission of the University of Iowa, the Center is a convening space dedicated to debate and discovery. Center grants for University of Iowa artists and researchers support imaginative collaborations and multi-disciplinary exploration. Center programming connects scholars across campus and across the world and engages the larger public in the ambitious, illuminating, and transformative work of the artists and scholars we serve.
The Center also actively seeks to build bridges to connect the University of Iowa campus with local and national communities. Through public events, community and campus partnerships, programs like the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy, and membership in the consortium Imagining America: Artist and Scholars in Public Life, the Center supports publicly engaged arts, scholarship, research, and teaching. Working with the University of Iowa Press on the Humanities and Public Life Book Series is yet another way of inspiring discoveries, imaginative practices, and mutually beneficial partnerships.
Humanities & Public Life 