We’re meeting to enjoy re-connecting again! Join us to meet old friends and make new ones. You buy your drinks, we serve you tasty snacks, and we all benefit from getting to know each other outside of class! Please RSVP here to help us plan for you, but if you forget, come anyway – we want to see you!

We’re meeting to enjoy re-connecting again! Join us to meet old friends and make new ones. You buy your drinks, we serve you tasty snacks, and we all benefit from getting to know each other outside of class! Please RSVP here to help us plan for you, but if you forget, come anyway – we want to see you!

An afternoon with OLLI at UVA. Join us for a lecture with Dr. Lynn Rainville, socializing with friends and a walking tour of downtown Staunton.

Staunton Spirits: exploring local ghost stories

Join local author and ethno-historian, Dr. Lynn Rainville, as she shares centuries of local ghost stories. This illustrated talk reveals the backstories behind historic Haunts in central Virginia and the sites associated with their hauntings.

After earning her PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology, Lynn Rainville has spent the last two decades as a Public Historian, studying Virginia’s historic cemeteries, enslaved communities, segregated schools, poor farms, and its role in World War I. Her grant-funded research has produced numerous articles and books, including Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Virginia; Sweet Briar College; Virginia and the Great War; Invisible Founders: How Two Centuries of African American Families Transformed a Plantation into a College. Today she works as an historic consultant on Virginian history and culture.

Followed by Social 6 p.m.

Join us as we celebrate the last day of the spring 2024 semester.

Ghost Tour at 7 p.m.

Staunton's Haunted History features the city's history here, history of each stop, ghost stories and people's own personal paranormal experiences they have shared with us.

Please contact the OLLI Office if you would like to join us for one or two of the three opportunities listed and we will assist you with your enrollment.

This course will examine the basic beliefs and practices of Islam, the second largest religion in the world today. Our focus will be on the most universal traditions (the “Five Pillars”}, but we will also consider the major differences between Islam’s major branches (Sunni, Shi’ite and Sufi) and the various ways the “sixth pillar,” Sharia, has been developed. Some comparison with other faith traditions will be considered briefly, including both shared and conflicting beliefs and practices. You might be surprised how much overlap there is between Christianity, Judaism and Islam! 

Recommended Reading: 

The shortest introduction is Islam: A Very Short Introduction, by Malise Ruthven (Oxford UP paperback). For more depth, you might consider Karen Armstrong’s Islam: A Short History, or Reza Aslan’s No god but God (with the advantage of offering a Muslim’s perspective). No reading is assumed, but any will be helpful! The class will have an opportunity to decide whether or not to visit a nearby mosque together. 

From June 6th, 1944 to May 8th, 1945, US and Allied Armies destroyed the Nazi war machine in a series of land campaigns on the Western Front that covered millions of square miles and changed the course of history. This course will examine the Men, Women, weapons and battles that ended Nazi rule in Western Europe.