Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Terrors of Irish Fairylore,” an introduction to Ireland’s strange and unsettling folkloric “Good People,” with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University, co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, and co-author of the new book Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-irish-fairy-terrors .]

Today it is common to think of fairies as small, childlike, sparkly creatures with glittering wings and dresses made from flower petals. But the fae of traditional Irish folklore were no such things.

Amoral, capricious, even malicious when they chose to be, the too-frequently forgotten fairies of times long past would, more often than not, haunt nightmares.

Join Brittany Warman, a folklorist who has earned a devoted following among Profs and Pints fans, as she explores the darker side of Irish fairylore.

The figures she'll discuss include: The Leanan-Sidhe, a vampiric fairy who gives artistic inspiration in exchange for your mortal spirit. The Dullahan, a fairy with a human spine for a whip and a habit of hurtling across fields in a death coach made from human skin. The Banshee, a mournful fairy whose cry signals a death in the family to which she's attached herself.

Dr. Warman also will examine the surprising impact of fairy folklore on two classics of Irish Gothic literature, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

It’s a talk that will remind you that the relationship between the Irish and the spooky stretches well beyond Halloween. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: “The Banshee Appears,” an 1862 illustration by Robert Prowse (Wicklow Heritage / Public domain).

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Ireland’s Fight for Freedom,” with Kevin Matthews, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and former London correspondent for Vatican Radio reporting on British and Irish news.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/northern-virginia-ireland-freedom .]

After centuries of struggle, Irish men and women won their freedom from Great Britain after waging a war that set the pattern for all other independence struggles of the 20th century. But there was a price—the partition of their country, a split setting the stage for the Northern Ireland “Troubles” that didn’t end until 1998.

Gain a deeper understanding of Ireland and its history with Professor Kevin Matthews, a historian and frequent Smithsonian Associates speaker who had served as a journalist covering the last stages of the Troubles in Ireland in the early and mid 1990s.

He’ll discuss in depth how the Irish won independence in a two-year war between 1919 and 1921, covering topics as the role women played in the conflict, the life and tactics of the revolutionary leader Michael Collins, and the Irish development of “urban guerilla warfare” using small, highly mobile armed units called “flying columns.”

Most important, this talk will examine how the conflict between Irish nationalists and Irish unionists led to Ireland’s division and later conflict. From the Easter Rising to the Good Friday Agreement, from Bloody Sunday to Brexit, this conflict has never quite gone away.

As the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats once wrote:

Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Professor Matthews will explore how the Irish fought to a standstill what was then the mightiest empire in the world and how, more than he could have known, Yeats’ prediction still rings true today. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Members of the Irish Republican Army’s West Connemara Flying Column in 1921. (Public Domain photo.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Wink, Nod, Kill,” a look at implicit calls for violence and other speech that leads to bloodshed and threatens democracy, with Kurt Braddock, assistant professor of communications at American University and expert on terrorism.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-wink-nod-kill .]

Over the last decade, President Donald Trump and many of his allies have used language that implicitly advocates for the use of violence without directing it outright. From telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” to suggesting that legal acts of Democratic lawmakers should be “punishable by death,” Trump has consistently suggested that violence is a viable means of addressing political grievances.

Support for political violence—implicit or explicit—goes beyond the sort of spirited debate and disagreement upon which the American experiment was founded. It represents a gray area in the connection between violent language and violent acts, an area that Kurt Braddock has spent years studying.

Learn about research on the connection between real bloodshed and coded language, dogwhistles, and implicit calls for violence with Dr. Braddock, who has conducted research on communication and terrorism for several national and international organizations, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State, and the United Nations Office of Counter Terrorism.

Professor Braddock will give his audience a firm grounding in the concept of “stochastic terrorism,” or political violence spawned by vague calls to violent action. Tapping into decades of research on communication and decision-making and accounts of specific violent acts inspired by implicit orders, he’ll show us that the threat posed by implicit calls to violence is real.

He’ll discuss whether implicit calls for violence represent a “new” form of political communication protected by the First Amendment, and he’ll describe the real-world dangers posed by these kinds of statements.

Among the questions Dr. Braddock will tackle: Why do politicians use this language if they can reasonably assume that someone may be motivated by it to hurt someone else? Perhaps most importantly, what can we do about it, especially given the sacrosanctity of the First Amendment?

His talk promises to give you a much more sophisticated understanding of recent events and a clearer sense of what might lie ahead. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Right-wing pundit and podcaster Steve Bannon routinely uses violent rhetoric. (Photo by Nordiske Mediedager / Creative Commons. )

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Celtic Mythology,” an exploration of the beliefs of a people whose influence spread far beyond the British Isles, with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, past president of the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies, former editor of its journal, Eolas, and visiting assistant teaching professor of English at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-celtic-mythology .]

The Celts inhabited lands stretching from the British Isles to parts of France and the Holy Roman Empire. Their influence can be seen in the art of the Vikings, in the rich oral and literary traditions of the Irish, Welsh and Bretons, and in the modern renaissance of Celtic culture. But who exactly were they?

Get into the minds of the Celtic people by learning about their myths and beliefs with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, a scholar of Old and Middle Irish and Middle Welsh language and literature and published translator of Old Irish texts whose dynamic and fascinating talks have earned a considerable following among Profs and Pints fans.

Dr. Tracy will delve into early medieval literary records that tell stories of the Tuatha de Danann, a godlike people who invaded Ireland and then were defeated themselves.

She’ll offer a new perspective on faeries, banshees, and leprechauns by describing how the ancient Otherworldy people once believed to inhabit the western realms of Ireland were diminished or demonized into figures of popular folklore. You’ll learn how the ancient God of the Sun become one of the “little people” guarding cauldrons of gold and bestowing luck, how immortal beings of majestic stature shrank to small winged creatures in the back of gardens, and how supernatural women associated with the “people of the mound” became screaming harbingers of death.

We’ll explore how medieval literary texts inspired later legends and became adapted into folklore. You’ll gain an understanding of how the medieval Catholic Church’s growing power led local people to reimagine their ancient gods and goddesses as Christian figures like Saint Bridget and Saint Patrick.

You’ll gain an appreciation of how the Celts gave rise to living traditions that survive in modern popular culture through the preservation of languages, storytelling and music enjoyed all over the world, and renewed interest in goddesses like Brid and celebrations like Samhain. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From “Riders of the Sidhe,” a 1911 John Duncan painting of the Tuatha Dé Danann.