Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Japanese Ghost Stories,” with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University and co-founder of the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-japanese-ghost-stories2 .]

Spend a late March afternoon feeling chills down your spin. Join folklorist Brittany Warman, a favorite of Profs and Pints audiences, for a look at the eerie ghost stories of Japan.

You’ll get acquainted with several spirits and creatures that populate traditional Japanese folklore, among them: The Yuki-Onna, the sinister snow woman who dances on a knife-edge between murder and mercy. A fabulously beautiful samurai daughter who demands bravery and intellect from her future husband—but actually just might be a goblin. The spirit that haunts the cherry blossom tree, whose irresistible melancholy is “the phantom light of long-expired suns.”

You’ll also learn about the incredible life of Koizumi Yakumo, the storyteller who first made these traditional tales available to western audiences and helped popularize them around the world. Born in 1850 under the name of Lafcadio Hearn to an Irish officer-surgeon and a Greek woman, he led a wildly unconventional life. He travelled from Greece to the slums of Dublin to the newspaper offices of Cincinnati to the kitchens of New Orleans before settling in Japan, where he adopted Japanese citizenship and changed his name.

His life as a permanent outsider—and the hatred of prejudice instilled in him by it—shaped him as a storyteller. He became both a conduit of Japanese culture and a champion of the chilling and uncanny.

This deep dive in his life and the ghost stories he gathered and retold will be by turns frightening, hilarious, baffling, and poignant, and will make you understand why his tales remain beloved in Japan and the world over. It’s a great opportunity to become familiar with the ghosts of a nation and the man who told them to the world. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: A Japanese Yuki-Onna, or snow spirit, as depicted in the 1737 Hyakkai-Zukan, or book of demons, by Sawaki Suushi.

Profs and Pints Baltimore 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.

[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://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-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 one 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 goddess as Christian figures and 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.)

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

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Boston Massacre’s Backstory,” a look at the hidden history of an event that you probably heard mythologized in school, with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland at College Park.

[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://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-boston-massacre ]

Everyone knows something about the Boston Massacre: the snowy night, the redcoat soldiers lined up like a firing squad, the helpless civilians lying in heaps in front of them. Five people were killed that night—March 5, 1770—and their deaths at the hands of the British military is a grim and well-known milestone on the road to the American Revolution.

But most of what we think we know is wrong, the product of layers of myth and centuries of distortion.

What went down that night on King Street was nothing like the frozen cartoon lineup we’ve seen in textbooks a thousand times. The true story of the Boston Massacre was messier and darker and filled with the sort of class and race divisions that often get whitewashed out of the popular mythology of the Revolution.

It began two years earlier when the troops first arrived to turn Boston into an occupied town. Some of those redcoats would make friends in Boston and marry local women. Others would make sworn enemies. The tensions between soldiers and civilians built slowly—one drunken argument at a time—until the powder keg was primed and ready to explode.

It took weeks and months for everyone to figure out what had happened that night. In its aftermath, both soldiers and civilians began trying to assign meaning to this tragic loss of local life—and to give it a name. The official British report called it an “unhappy disturbance,” but Boston leaders took to calling it the “horrid massacre.”

You’ll love seeing the 1770 Boston Massacre explored from all its many sides by University of Maryland historian Richard Bell, whose electric speaking style has earned him a large Profs and Pints audience following. Drawing on the latest scholarship, he’ll convince you that the backstory of the “affray on King Street” makes it far more fascinating than Paul Revere’s famous engraving of it has led us to believe. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A chromolithograph reproduction of “Boston Massacre, March 5th, 1770,” an 1855 painting by William L. Champney (Boston Athenaeum).

Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore 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/heavy-seas-celtic .]

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 one 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 goddess as Christian figures and 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. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

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