Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “An Evening with Jack the Ripper,” your chance to become familiar with a mysterious killer, with Luxx Mishou, Victorianist, scholar of Jack the Ripper, and former instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy and area community colleges.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-jack-the-ripper .]

In 1888 England was gripped by an “Autumn of Terror” as a wave of shocking and brutal murders took place in Whitechapel, a district in London’s East End. In crowded streets, busy neighborhoods, and lodgings with thin walls, at least five women were ferociously – yet seemingly silently – attacked, their remains left in public spaces to be found by their neighbors. Bold headlines and gruesome illustrations covered the front pages of English newspapers, some of which received “gifts” and confessional letters from a culprit who was never caught or officially named.

For decades historians and Ripperologists have tried to pinpoint who this mysterious killer could have been. Among the curious is Luxx Mishou, a Victorian era and gender studies scholar, who has spent years scouring historical accounts and nineteenth-century newspapers that traced the movements of England’s most notorious, and mysteriously elusive, serial killer.

Join Dr. Mishou for a trip back in time to discuss the infamous Jack the Ripper case. She’ll talk about what really happened in Whitechapel, what Victorian journalists and newspapers knew, and whether the sensational press coverage surrounding the murders helped or actually hindered the search for a perpetrator.

She’ll also discuss what the London public thought of the monster lurking in their midst and why we’re still obsessed with this whodunit over 130 years later.

Finally, we’ll tackle the biggest question of all: Who was Jack the Ripper? Dr. Mishou believes her research has left her ready to point to the killer. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: A wanted poster published in connection with the Whitechapel murders.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Powerful Magicians of Renaissance Europe,” a look at how supernatural beliefs drove leading thinkers in a time of exploration and progress, with Anthony Grafton, professor of history at Princeton University and teacher of courses on art, magic and science during that era.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-powerful-magicians ]

The decades around 1500 were marked by intense exploration of new ways of life. While some thinkers of that era, such as Machiavelli and Leonardo, remain well-known, largely forgotten is another set of individuals who were every bit as brilliant and perhaps as famous in their day. They included monks and medical men, philosophers and inventors, and together they crafted a new set of ways to understand and control the universe. They gave an ancient name, “magic,” to the set of disciplines that they brought together and offered their clients, and they themselves were known as Magi.

Get better acquainted with the Magi with the help of Professor Anthony Grafton, a scholar of the Renaissance whose many books include Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa.

He’ll describe how the Magi were astrologers who drew up horoscopes and believed that that the power of the stars directed life on earth at every level. They didn’t just read the stars, however—they devised diets and regimens, talismans and rituals that could make the impact of the stars less harmful. They gave practical advice on investments and relationships, and they were also therapists who could save their clients from the destructive power of madness and melancholy.

Renaissance magic came in many forms. Magi and their helpers talked with angels. They used spells from ancient India and Persia, as well as the Islamic world and the Christian monasteries of their own time, to keep their clients safe on voyages, to make their investments prosper and their children flourish. They learned from the Jewish Kabbalists to see the Hebrew alphabet as a special source of power and knowledge.

Magi startled their audiences with automata, moving figures that took every form from animals and humans to model sailing ships that carried salt and pepper shakers. They scared audiences with lamps that projected frightening images of devils and monsters onto walls. Both their encounters with supernatural beings and their mechanical devices were so startling that many around them feared that they had made pacts with the devil, inspiring the greatest writers and artists of their time to create such unforgettable figures as Prospero and Doctor Faustus.

To help you understand what drove the Magi, Professor Grafton will discuss how it was natural for them to see magic as effective. Scholars at the time agreed that the wisest inhabitants of the earth had been ancient Egyptians and Babylonians—the very people who first created magic. Churches were stocked with sacred relics and images of the saints—physical objects, solid and colorful, which could perform miracles, curing diseases of every kind. Finally, some forms of magic—such as cryptography, which was crucial for secure communication between government and their ambassadors in other states—clearly worked.

In the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Magi lost out to philosophers who rejected magic and created a new vision of nature as made up of soulless matter and forces devoid of heavenly influences. Yet these new thinkers, whose ranks included Francis Bacon and René Descartes, learned important things from the magi and shared the magicians’ aspirations to alter their world. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A woodcut illustration from a 1582 edition of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Horror as Queer,” a look at the influence and depiction of queerness in horror films, with May Santiago, adjunct professor of film studies at George Mason University and producer of the podcast Horrorspiria.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-horror-as-queer ]

Horror was queer long before both Brad and Janet succumbed to the charms of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In fact, one could make the argument that, for both better and worse, the history of horror films is the history of queers on film. Film scholar May Santiago will do just that, with plenty of vivid examples, in a talk that has earned rave reviews.

You’ll learn how queer auteurs such as F.W. Murnau and James Whale were there at the very beginning. Murnau played a central role in the German expressionist movement that gave rise to films such as Nosferatu, while Whale left a body of work full of queer codes, including the films Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Invisible Man.

From there, Santiago will discuss how the representational codes established by such queer filmmakers were appropriated throughout the celluloid century by non-queer authors who constructed cinematic horror language that used queerness as shorthand for the monstrous. The result was harmful stereotypes of queer people in films and society, with examples being the stoic psycho lesbian trope embodied by Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, the transgender sex-obsessed serial murderer Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and the villains of Dressed to Kill and Silence of the Lambs.

Yet, even with these negative portrayals of explicit or implicit queerness, horror cinema’s relationship with queerness and queer audiences has grown stronger with each passing decade, with queer authors and queer audiences reclaiming the monstrosity that created the basis of the horror genre. Santiago will look at how the evolution of horror films coincided with that of queer stereotypes and how queer authors embedded queerness in films that aren’t explicitly queer. Among the questions she’ll tackle: How did we come around to thinking that the Babadook was gay? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A frame from the 1920 silent German horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (tint added).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Horror in the East,” a look at truly frightening Buddhist beliefs and rituals, with Justin McDaniel, professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of the Penn Ghost Project, and former Buddhist monk.

[Doors open at 3. The talk starts at 4:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-horror-east ]

Profs and Pints is bringing to Guilford Hall one of its most fascinating speakers, Professor Justin McDaniel, a former Buddhist monk whose teachings about macabre Eastern beliefs and practices are sure to expand your horizons when it comes to horror.

Westerners often regard Buddhism as a religion of peace, meditation, and compassion. While this is often true, it ignores the horrific and phantasmagoric side of many Buddhist rituals and beliefs. Those include practices such as meditating on corpses, strolling through giant “Hell Gardens” filled with terrifying images, and telling stories about haunting and highly sexualized ghosts. It’s no wonder that Buddhist countries produce some of the most violent horror films in the world.

Professor McDaniel will give an entertaining and highly visual talk looking at the ways in which Buddhists in Japan, Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Singapore, and other places embrace the macabre. You’ll leave with a much richer understanding of Buddhism and the cultures and worldviews that gave rise to horror movies that can scare the wits out of you.

Dr. McDaniel has lived a life that gives him distinct expertise on this subject matter. He has published award-winning books on meditation, ghosts, and Buddhist literature, studies Buddhist art, and translates Buddhist manuscripts. He lived for many years in Southeast Asia, where he conducted research as a Fulbright Fellow, taught and translated, and became a Buddhist monk. He also has regularly given cemetery tours and founded the Penn Ghost Project, an interdisciplinary effort to study beliefs in spirits from the beyond.

His talk will give you a much richer perspective on horror as a worldwide phenomenon. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Punishment depicted in the hell garden at Aluvihara Rock Cave Temple in Sri Lanka (Photo by istolethetv/ Creative Commons).