NEO Mini-Course Series
2021 AROHE Innovation Award winner for contributions to
university-community relations!
Since 2019, NEO has partnered with Evanston Public Library (EPL) to offer quarterly non-credit, no-charge mini-courses to the greater Evanston community—as well as to NEO’s own membership. Each mini-course typically consists of two 90-minute sessions, held on a weekday evening in consecutive weeks and taught by a Northwestern emerita or emeritus. Courses are offered in-person in the Community Meeting Room at Evanston Public Library, 1703 Orrington Ave., Downtown Evanston and via Zoom. Registration is required. A library card is not required.
Photo by Al Telser
Upcoming Mini-Courses
Thursdays, April 18 & May 2, 2024, 6pm-7:45pm CT. Misconceptions About The Holocaust presented by Peter Hayes, Prof. Emeritus of History and German and Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor of Holocaust Studies Emeritus.
Despite being thoroughly documented, discussions about the Holocaust are plagued by poor logic and misleading metaphors–no surprise considering the mind-bending scale of this horror.
The Holocaust is one of the best documented events in human history. But the subject is also surrounded by numerous misconceptions. Some of these are tempting but doubly false logical propositions: for example, killing six million people was an expensive, complicated, and self-destructive operation that must have detracted from the German war effort. Others are caused by familiar metaphors that obscure more than they reveal, such as “factories of death” or “industrial murder.” Professor Hayes will delve into these and other persistent notions that get in the way of understanding how the Nazi onslaught nearly achieved its goal of eradicating European Jewry. In-person and Zoom, Evanston Public Library Main. Register.
Past Mini-Courses
Academic Year 2023-2024
- Winter Qtr (Feb 6/13): Prof. Emer. D. Soyini Madison, Department of Performance Studies, Black Abstract Art and The Black Imagination.
- Fall Qtr (Oct 25/Nov 1): Prof. Emer. Henry C. Binford, Department of History, The Emergence of Modern Chicago.
Academic Year 2022-2023
- Spring Qtr (Apr 20/May 4, 2023): Prof. Emer. Richard Kieckhefer, Departments of History and Religious Studies, Sacred Places: What Gave London, Paris, and Florence Their Allure.
- Winter Qtr (Jan 18/25, 2023): Prof. Emer. Dr. Barbara J. Deal with Dr. Stephen Devries, Director of the educational Gaples Institute for Integrative Cardiology. “Diet, Heart Health, and Living a Full Life.”
- Fall Qtr (Oct 11/18, 2022): Prof. Emer. Emile A. Okal, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, on 40 Years of Tsunami Research.
Visit NEO’s Archive for additional past mini-course lectures.