Spring Minicourse Registration Open–5-Week Courses–Friends Library

The Friends of the Madison Public Library are offering two new minicourses for the Spring 2025 Semester. ‘The Ancient Art of Egypt’ by Dr. Rita Keane, Professor of Art History, Drew University will begin on Monday afternoon, April 7, at the Florham Park Library, and ‘Media and Crime in America’ by Dr. Meghan Sacks will begin Tuesday afternoon, April 8, at the Madison Community House. Both minicourses will be held in-person for two hours from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm for five consecutive weeks.

The tuition for each minicourse is $95. To register, visit our website, www.friendsmadisonnjlibrary.org/minicourse-registration. For more information, email the Friends at minicoursesmadisonlibrary@gmail.com, or leave a message at 929-450-7940.

The minicourses are organized by the all-volunteer Friends of the Madison Public Library, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. All proceeds benefit the Madison Public Library.

‘Ancient Art of Egypt’ by Dr. Rita Keane, Professor of Art History, Drew University

5 Monday afternoons, 1:00 – 3:00 pm, Florham Park Library, 107 Ridgedale Ave, Florham Park

April 7, 14, 21, 28 and May 5, 2025.

In this course we will survey the cultural production of ancient Egypt over three thousand years, from the third millennium BCE through the last pharaoh, Cleopatra VII. We will consider the close alignment of ancient Egyptian art with the natural world and with political power, as well as the most famous monuments of funerary art, such as the Great Pyramids. Figures studied will include Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen, Ramesses II, and Cleopatra. We will pay special attention to works of art accessible in American museum collections, especially the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

April 7 - Introduction, the history of Egyptology, the first Egyptian art

April 14 - The Age of Pyramids, the Old Kingdom

April 21 - The Middle Kingdom, and the early New Kingdom: Hatshepsut

April 28 - Change in the New Kingdom: the Amarna period, and Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamen

May 5 - Cleopatra & Greco-Roman Egypt

‘Media and Crime in America’ by Dr. Meghan Sacks, Professor of Criminology, Fairleigh Dickinson University,

5 Tuesday Afternoons 1:00 – 3:00 pm, Madison Community House, 25 Cook Ave, Madison

April 8, 15, 22, 29 and May 6, 2025.

Every day we have contact with some type of media. Whether this media exposure is through television, the computer, our phones, or other sources, we are consuming media for various purposes, including news and entertainment. A lot of what is portrayed in the media relates to

crime, however most of what is portrayed is not congruent with the reality of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States. This means that people who rely on this type of news will hold serious misconceptions about the reality of crime in our country. In this course, we will examine media coverage and the misconceptions that follow this coverage to reveal the truth beyond the headlines.

Rita Keane is a professor of Art History at Drew University. She has an M.A. in art history from Williams College, and a doctorate in art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was honored with the coveted President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2023.

Keane has been at Drew (and has lived in Madison) since 2008. At Drew she teaches the ancient and medieval curriculum in the Art History department, including ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, as well as medieval art and Islamic art.

Meghan Sacks, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is currently a Professor of Criminology at Fairleigh Dickinson University. In her fifteen years at FDU, she served as founder and director of the Criminology major, the Graduate Program Director and the Internship Program Director.

She teaches courses including Criminological Theory, Crime Policy, Media and Crime and Serial Killers. Her research on the criminal justice system and the people in it has been published in several academic journals, as well as two books and she currently co-hosts three true crime podcasts: Direct Appeal, Women and Crime, and Campus Killings. Prior to her academic career, Meghan served as a United States Probation Officer in the Southern District of New York.