What we’re about
Profs and Pints brings professors and other college instructors into bars, cafes, and other venues to give fascinating talks or to conduct instructive workshops. They cover a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, popular culture, horticulture, literature, creative writing, and personal finance. Anyone interested in learning and in meeting people with similar interests should join. Lectures are structured to allow at least a half hour for questions and an additional hour for audience members to meet each other. Admission to Profs and Pints events requires the purchase of tickets, either in advance (through the link provided in event descriptions) or at the door to the venue. Many events sell out in advance.
Although Profs and Pints has a social mission--expanding access to higher learning while offering college instructors a new income source--it is NOT a 501c3. It was established as a for-profit company in hopes that, by developing a profitable business model, it would be able to spread to other communities much more quickly than a nonprofit dependent on philanthropic support. That said, it is welcoming partners and collaborators as it seeks to build up audiences and spread to new cities. For more information email profsandpints@hotmail.com.
Thank you for your interest in Profs and Pints.
Regards,
Peter Schmidt, Founder, Profs and Pints
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Profs & Pints Charlottesville: Nosferatu Versus DraculaGraduate Charlottesville, Charlottesville, VA
Profs and Pints Charlottesville presents: “Nosferatu Versus Dracula,” on the rivalry between two versions of a vampire and its lasting impact on how we think of their kind, with Stanley Joseph Stepanic, who teaches a course on Dracula and vampire folklore as an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of Virginia.
[All tickets must be purchased online with sales tax and processing fees added. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/charlottesville-nosferatu .]
The Robert Eggers remake of Nosferatu that was released to acclaim last Christmas represents just the latest effort to bring this vampire to life. It’s tempting to credit the acclaimed German silent film director F.W. Murnau as the first to do so, but doing so obscures how much Murnau owed to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, who continues on his own to pop up on the big screen every few years.
Come dig up the vampires beneath the vampires with the help of Dr. Stanley Stepanic, whose course on Dracula ranks as one of UVA’s most popular and who previously has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks.
He’ll discuss the folkloric origins of Stoker’s Count Dracula and how Nosferatu and its lead character Count Orlok fit into the picture. You’ll learn how these reimagined versions of long-feared undead beings helped cement the vampire’s status as one of the most enduring and prominent symbols of the human condition throughout the world.
Though considered a landmark of horror fiction today, Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula was not initially a success. Stoker died in relative obscurity, remembered primarily for his contributions to theater operations and not his writing. What brought attention to the novel was a copyright lawsuit alleging that Murnau had essentially robbed Stoker’s grave by turning Dracula into his 1922 silent film Nosferatu.
The subsequent legal battle over the film and the media attention generated by it led Stoker's widow, Florence, to move forward with a dramatic production of Dracula which was first performed in England in 1924 and then on Broadway in the United States in 1927. These stage productions in turn led to the first proper film version of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi and released in 1931.
Through such developments, Count Dracula evolved from a relatively minor villain that introduced little that was new to vampire literature into a popular culture phenomenon who has appeared in the media in countless forms. He and his various offspring will loom larger in your imagination as a result of this talk. (Advance tickets: $13.50. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open to talk attendees at 4:30 pm and the talk itself starts at 6 pm.)
Image: From a 1922 German promotional poster for Nosferatu. Artist: Albin Grau.