Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “It Came from Within,” a look at the real-life psychological disorders linked to some of your favorite movie frights, with Brian A. Sharpless, former assistant professor at Penn State University and Washington State University, editor of Unusual and Rare Psychological Disorders, and author of Monsters on the Couch: The Real Psychological Disorders Behind Your Favorite Horror Movies.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-it-came-from-within .]

Gear up for Halloween with something that will leave you even more rattled by your favorite horror films: A look at real-life psychological conditions connected to movie monsters.

Clinical psychology has a lot to teach us about horror, and horror movies reveal a lot about both psychological distress and some of the fundamental fears that go along with being human. Join Brian Sharpless, a clinical psychologist with a big following among Profs and Pints fans, for a talk that will give new meaning to the phrase “It’s all in your mind.”

In a talk that draws from history, folklore, and film studies, Dr. Sharpless will discuss what clinical psychology and psychiatry have to say about various movie monsters. Starting with those from the golden age of cinema, he’ll discuss famous fiends such as Dracula, and why some people today seek to drink others’ blood. You’ll learn how professionals can detect Renfield's syndrome in people who try to conceal having it, as well as how real vampires behave differently according to sex.

Moving ahead to more recent films such as The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and It Follows, he’ll talk about the delusional misidentification disorders, surprisingly common in certain elderly populations, which involves the belief that loved ones have been kidnapped and replaced with imposters. You’ll learn about the relationship between sleep paralysis and films such as Mara or Dead Awake, and how movies depicting alien abduction or “shadow people” are tied to psychological conditions.

Finally, Dr. Sharpless will look at what drives certain monstrous behaviors, such as cannibalism. Just in case you might someday be unlucky enough to find yourself in a “survival cannibalism” situation, Dr. Sharpless will give you practical tips for not becoming someone’s next meal.

You'll end up watching horror movies differently and, perhaps, wondering what might be going on in the heads of people seated in the theater near you. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk itself starts at 6:30)

Image: An 1810 engraving by Jean-Pierre Simon depicts a vision like those often associated with sleep paralysis (Wellcome Trust / Wikimedia Commons).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Macabre Poe,” a look at Edgar Allan Poe’s most gruesome and horrifying works and what inspired them, with Amy Branam Armiento, professor of English at Frostburg State University, past president of the Poe Studies Association, and editor of two books on the acclaimed American author.

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

Stephen King has said that he and other horror writers are all “the children of Poe,” a reference to how they’re unable to escape his shadow. Although Edgar Allan Poe penned works in a long list of genres, including fantasy, detective fiction, and poetry, his most prominent legacy is as the master of the macabre. Over the nearly two centuries since Poe lived, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Masque of the Red Death” have haunted millions of readers.

Who, exactly, was Poe? Why does he remain as one of the United States’ best-known writers at home and abroad? Why do his works continue to resonate with readers more than 150 years after they were published?

Come hear such questions tackled by Amy Branam Armiento, a leading Poe scholar who edited More Than Love: The Enduring Fascination with Edgar Allan Poe, co-edited Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision, and formerly served as president of an international organization that supports the scholarly and informal exchange of information on Poe’s life, works, times, and influence.

Professor Armiento will look at which people and events influenced Poe’s literary works. His troubled life included the slow deaths of his mother, brother, foster mother, and wife, as well as a problematic relationship with alcohol and a difficult relationship with his foster father. All shaped his relationship with death, horror, and the unknown.
She'll also look at how Poe’s horror tales laid the groundwork for the characters, circumstances, and other conventions of horror stories.

We’ll explore how Poe shattered literary conventions of his own time by embracing lurid descriptions of violence, especially violence perpetrated between family members and loved ones. You’ll learn how Poe adapted conventions of the fairy tale to create his memorable, haunting tales, an aspect of his work that is hidden in plain sight.

The presentation will also include examples of evocative artwork used to illustrate editions of Poe's works. Get ready to feel chills down your spine. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: Poe as depicted in a modern retouched version of a daguerreotype by Mathew Benjamin Brady. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.)

Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore presents: “Medieval Monsters,” with Lilla Kopár, a professor of medieval literature and culture at Catholic University who teaches courses on medieval monster lore and Norse mythology.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/heavy-seas-medieval-monsters .]

Bar the door and clutch your sword. Profs and Pints is about to bring the Heavy Seas taproom in Halethorpe, Maryland, a Halloween-season visit from the monsters that kept medieval people awake throughout long, dark nights.

Your guide in touring this menacing menagerie will be Dr. Lilla Kopár, an expert on early medieval England and Scandinavia who teaches Catholic University’s students about things that terrified in days of yore.

The event marks the Heavy Seas debut of Profs and Pints, a social enterprise that has built large followings in Baltimore, Washington, and other cities by staging fascinating and engaging scholarly talks geared toward the general public and priced affordably.

Dr. Kopár’s illustrated talk will explore the origins of medieval monster lore in the classical, biblical, and Norse mythological traditions. It also will give us a much more nuanced understanding of monsters, explaining how we don’t just fear them, but love them and badly need them in our lives.

Among the questions Dr. Kopár will tackle: What, exactly, is a monster? Where do monsters come from? Why do all cultures treat them as serving a valuable purpose?

She’ll discuss how monsters are highly functional constructs. They help us define who we are and who were aren’t, and to explain, structure, and control the world around us. They highlight differences and they mark cultural categories and boundaries—which they then trespass. We can project our fears onto them and then feel better when we confine and kill them. Without monsters there are no heroes.

We’ll encounter categorization-defying monsters that are a mixture of beasts or half beast and half human. We’ll spend time with famous literary monsters, including dragons, giants, and the monsters of Beowulf and the King Arthur legends. We’ll get to know monsters that found a place on old maps or the sides of cathedrals.

On the much darker side, we’ll learn how monstrosity was attributed to people who were somehow different—through disease, disability, or belief in another religion—often as a means of justifying their exclusion or persecution. Sometimes belief in monsters turned people into monsters themselves. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A gargoyle at England’s Magdalen College. (Photo by Chris Creagh / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Early American Witch Hunts,” a look at the colonial hysteria that led to the tragedy of Salem, with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland.

[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-witch-hunts . ]

Salem, 1692: Two young girls living in the household of one of the town’s ministers are acting strangely and having fits. A doctor is summoned and tells the minister that his girls are suffering from the action of the Devil’s ‘Evil Hand’ upon them. News of the doctor’s diagnosis quickly spreads and confirms what many in town are already whispering: These girls are the victims of witchcraft. They have been cursed by witches living somewhere in Salem.

The notorious Salem witch hunts that resulted were hardly isolated incidents. Instead, they marked the culmination of anti-witch hysteria that had crossed the Atlantic with early colonists, inspiring laws banning witchcraft and the execution of accused witches elsewhere.

Learn in depth about witch hunts in the colonies from Dr. Richard Bell, a University of Maryland historian who has given terrific talks about the history underlying the Hamilton musical, Benjamin Franklin, the “reverse underground railroad,” and other subjects.

We’ll begin at the beginning, looking at what people in colonial America believed about witchcraft and how they carried out witch hunts to fight it. You’ll learn about the hallmarks of an American witch hunt and where else they had taken place.

Why is the 1662 outbreak of witch-hunting in Salem, a sleepy port town in Massachusetts, so well-known today? We’ll examine that infamous episode in depth, probing its most troubling corners and why that tragic episode claimed so many innocent lives. Among the questions Professor Bell will tackle: Did anyone face justice for their role in perpetrating this outrage? How have historians tried to explain the peculiar dynamics, impact, and legacy of what happened in Salem? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: From the 1869 painting “Witch Hill (The Salem Martyr)” by Thomas Satterwhite Noble (New York Historical Society Museum and Library / Wikimedia Commons).