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 Iowa City: The Hunted WitchGraduate Iowa City, Iowa City, IA
Profs and Pints Iowa City presents: “The Hunted Witch,” on witchcraft belief and witch persecution in Europe and New England, with Waltraud Maierhofer, professor of German and Global Health Studies at the University of Iowa, teacher of a course on witch hunts in history and fiction, and editor or translator of several German novels based on real witchcraft trials.
[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees and 12 percent state and local sales tax. Available at https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/familiars/ .]
Profs and Pints is bringing to the Graduate Iowa City an event that you'll find spellbinding: A fascinating look at the history of belief in witchcraft and attacks on those suspected of practicing it.
Focusing mainly on European witch trials that long predated the notorious ones in Salem, Mass., Dr. Waltraud Maierhofer will shatter many common myths about witch hunts and accused witches.
For example, you'll learn how, contrary to popular belief, most witch trials did not take place in the Middle Ages but later, in the Early Modern period. Prior to then, belief in magic and in its use for either good or evil penetrated people’s worldview, but most people regarded witchcraft—the use of magic for evil—as a “forgivable sin.”The Early Modern period brought with it a confluence of developments that aroused fear and contributed to suspicion of the existence of evil forces and of people harnessing such forces for personal gain. These developments included the Protestant Reformation, challenges to a God-centered worldview, scientific discoveries, the formation of distinct European states, and weather changes, known as “the little Ice Age,” that left people looking for scapegoats for crop failures.
In response, demonologists convinced worldly authorities that “witchcraft” should no longer be viewed as forgivable but, instead, as an “exceptional crime” that must be eradicated. The “witch,” they argued, needed to die and name others.Professor Maierhofer will discuss findings and theories regarding who the accusers were, who benefitted from witch trials, and which people were especially vulnerable to finger pointing. You may be surprised to learn how often the accused, rather being odd old women with cats, instead were both men and women with wealth and power.
We’ll also look at what today’s conspiracy theories have in common with historical witch hunts and where and why “real” witch hunts currently occur. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: A woodcut depicting supposed witch Mother Shipton from the 1834 John Ashton book Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century. (Public domain.)
