History and Culture   

Join us for a fun and informative class where you'll learn to prepare delicious and nutritious Chinese meals! You’ll get to enjoy a tasty lunch and take home vibrant recipes, including a flavorful tofu dip, a savory tofu casserole, and a cashew chicken with veggies. These recipes, provided by the Confucius Institute at UM, emphasize fresh ingredients and balanced nutrition. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your cooking skills and enjoy healthy, flavorful Chinese dishes!

Angela Yang retired from a career in medical research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan.

Come join us for an engaging class where you'll discover how to prepare healthy Chinese meals! Participants will enjoy a delicious lunch and take home colorful recipes, including fried rice noodles with chicken and veggies, ma-Pa tofu, and sesame chicken with veggies. These recipes focus on fresh, nutritious ingredients for a balanced and flavorful meal.

Angela Yang retired from a career in medical research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan.

The presentation draws primarily on materials from the collections of the Bentley Historical Library—including memoirs, diaries, family history materials, and business records—to highlight women’s voices throughout Northern Michigan around the turn of the twentieth century.

Michelle McClellan is an historian and archivist who grew up in Michigan. She has a PhD in American history from Stanford University and an MSI from the University of Michigan. She currently works at the Bentley Historical Library, part of the University of Michigan.

In this group, we will discuss historian Alan Taylor’s book: American Republics. Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, explores American political and social life in the decades leading up to American Civil War. He recasts the notion of Jacksonian Democracy highlighting its disturbing aspects, including the dominance of southern enslavers within the Democratic Party, the role of Jackson in the vicious campaign to eliminate Native Americans, the drive for territorial expansion and the corruption endemic to successive Democratic administrations, beginning with Andrew Jackson. Taylor shows these developments in the context of a new nation deeply divided by loyalties to states and regions and imbued with a sense of manifest destiny. While the book is focused clearly on the 17th and 18th centuries, it inevitably suggests parallels to the rise of patriarchal white nationalism in the U.S. over the last few decades.

Jon Swanson is a retired anthropologist, social worker, and union activist. He lived in Yemen for five years while doing field research and has continued to study Arabic and speaks it whenever an occasion arises. Jon has been an active OLLI member since 2023, participating in several writing courses. He was one of the poets featured in the recent OLLI poetry reading event. Richard Garrett has been an OLLI member since 2020. He has led several discussion groups dealing with public affairs, the intersection of science and society, and the history of the black working class. Prior to moving to Ann Arbor, Richard taught economics at Marymount Manhattan College and was a consultant to labor unions on corporate campaigns.

Numerous versions of Anne Frank's diary are ubiquitous on bookshelves and in classrooms worldwide. How did a Dutch Jewish teenager become an iconic symbol of the Holocaust? Why does her story continue to capture the hearts and minds of millions of people 80 years after her death? This course will explore the context for Anne Frank's life and death, and how they are both beautifully depicted and grossly distorted in educational, artistic, and media representations.

Robin Axelrod is a nationally recognized Holocaust educator and founder of Axelrod Coaching & Consulting. She earned a BA in Judaic Studies with distinction from the University of Michigan, and as a Wexner Graduate Fellow, earned her MSW and Certificate in Jewish leadership. She also holds a JD from Wayne State University and has advanced training in Holocaust education from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Robin was appointed to Michigan’s Governor’s Council on Genocide and Holocaust Education while serving as Director of Education at the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Metropolitan Detroit. Her lifelong study of Anne Frank includes treasured conversations with Miep Gies, one of the people who helped hide the Frank family.

What do you “pay” attention to—and why? Is attention the same as consciousness? Could it even be seen as a form of love? In this course, we’ll explore what attention really means in a time when everything is competing for it. Together, we’ll consider what happens to us as individuals and as a society when our ability to focus breaks down. Through discussion, reflection, and selected video clips, we’ll examine how preserving our attention is essential to our humanity.

Barb Cherem has taught in all areas of Education and taught about a dozen OLLI courses, most recently The 1619 Project with Meta Mendel-Reyes. She has a special interest in Black History, migrant equity and serves in the UUAA admin in several areas of social justice.

Bernie Beach has been a health care practitioner and administrator and runs a Mindfulness business. She had taught many courses for OLLI with many folks and has a special interest in women's issues. Currently, she serves as Secretary of OLLI's Leadership Council.

Ikebana (ē-kĕ-bah-nah) is the ancient art of Japanese flower arranging and one of the traditional arts of Japan. A free translation of Ikebana might be “living flowers” or “making flowers come alive.” When flowers are beautifully arranged in a container, the arrangement evokes the whole of nature itself, and people’s relationship with nature. The Ann Arbor Ikebana Chapter will present three sessions starting with an introduction to Ikebana and its design aesthetics. In the second session participants will create their own arrangement under the guidance of certified Ikebana instructors. The program ends with David’s talk: Ikebana Origins (Buddhist, Shinto, Literati Infusions) This talk covers Buddhism’s interaction with East Asian culture and its influence on the origins of Ikebana in Japan. Ikebana’s expression, in its emotive and meditative nature, is a testament to the deep historical traditions even in its most avant-garde executions.

Liz Larwa is the Ann Arbor Ikebana International Chapter #183 President. Ikebana has long been a part of her life, and she is now an instructor, Associate Master in the Ichiyo School, and a retired Presidential Award-winning teacher. Terre Voegeli has studied in the Ichiyo School for over nine years reaching Associate Master and is currently a board member of the Ann Arbor Ikebana International Chapter #183. She is a retired financial software business analyst having worked for Comshare | Infor. David Lee is the Ikebana International North/Central American Region (NCAR) Chair, board member of the Ann Arbor Ikebana International Chapter #183, and studies in the Ikebana Sogetsu School. He’s been influenced by Ikebana since childhood observing his grandmother, a Sogetsu and Koryu Sensei. He is a Retired Engineer from Ford Motor Company.
 

This brief study group of two sessions will offer an opportunity for history and library fans to join a project online through the Library of Congress (LoC). The By the People program seeks volunteers to help transcribe LoC materials to make them accessible and available online for all citizens and scholars. The study group will meet twice: first to form a group and explore program opportunities, and then perhaps a week or two later after participants have begun a project within the program. After that, members will be on their own unless the group would want to continue to meet informally to share their work and experiences. Check the LoC website for information: https://crowd.loc.gov/

Alice Horning is retired from the faculty at Oakland University where she taught writing and linguistics for more than 30 years. She has led more than half a dozen study groups since 2020.

This course rekindles interest in the American Revolution by breaking it down into distinct phases: Northern, Central, Western, and Southern. Through this approach, we explore the events of the Revolution with engaging vignettes about soldiers and other key moments. The course highlights the interplay between the political philosophy of the time and the unique geography of North America, which shaped the campaigns and battles.

Derek Brereton, Ph.D. is a retired cultural anthropologist at the University of Michigan, and the author of three previous books. He has taught many college level history courses for many years. He also has special interests in canoeing and the American frontier.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Vienna was one of the cultural, political, and social hotspots of Europe. In this study group we will illustrate and discuss some of the important and intriguing trends that began in this queen city of the Danube.

Rudi Lindner taught history at the university level for nearly sixty years. He claims to be the last of the Habsburg Jews.