Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Course of the Appalachian Trail,” on the fascinating past and uncertain future of a beloved wilderness trail and national park, with Mills Kelly, emeritus professor of history at George Mason University and author of A Hiker’s History of the Appalachian Trail.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/sterling-the-appalachian-trail .]

For more than 100 years the Appalachian Trail has provided opportunities to spend anywhere from a few hours to six months traversing the Appalachian Mountains. Stretching more than 2,000 miles across 14 states, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, it ranks among the most iconic long-distance hiking trails in the world. It and its associated national park are annually visited by nearly 17 million.

Gear up to perhaps spend some time on the trail yourself by spending an evening with Mills Kelly, an expert on all things Appalachian Trail and the author of two books and numerous articles on the trail’s history.

We’ll start our scholarly journey by looking at the trail’s origins. First proposed by Benton MacKaye, a forester, in 1921 as a place for urban workers to get some fresh air and sunshine, the trail took 16 years to scout, map, and carve out of the mountains. The first version was woven together mostly from abandoned mountain roads, Indigenous people's paths, and highways.

Drawing on research in archives up and down the length of the trail, Professor Kelly will show us archival photographs and video clips spread across the decades of the trail’s history, and he'll let the voices of hikers themselves describe how the experience of hiking has changed over the decades. You’ll learn what hikers ate before the advent of freeze-dried backpacker meals and when and why thru-hiking became a thing. More profoundly, we’ll examine how innovations in gear changed the experiences of women on the trail, and how changing attitudes about race transformed the hiking community.

Professor Kelly will describe how the trail is maintained entirely by 33 volunteer clubs. Looking ahead, he’ll discuss how the trail’s long-term health as a recreational resource is being affected by declining federal support, overuse in some sections, and climate change. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A 1928 photo of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club taking a break from its work (National Park Service / Public Domain).

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Dune and Messiahs,” on word of saviors in religion and science fiction, with Peter Herman, former lecturer in theology and religious studies at Marymount University and scholar of religious and social themes in sci fi.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/highline-dune-and-messiahs .]

Dune: Part Three is scheduled for release in December, and trailers for the epic space opera film have fans of the Dune franchise longing for it like visitors to its desert planet Arrakis long for water. Based on the second volume of renowned science fiction novelist Frank Herbert's Dune saga, the movie depicts the internal and external conflicts of protagonist Paul Atreides, an emperor treated by others as a messiah while being depicted as an antihero.

The film will raise intriguing questions related to the presence of redeeming figures, or messiahs, throughout both science fiction and religious texts. Among them: What exactly do we mean by the term “messiah”? Why have many religious traditions looked for a redeemer to emerge? What happens if the messiah gets it all wrong?

Explore such questions—and prepare yourself to enjoy the upcoming Dune film at a much deeper level—with Dr. Peter Herman, who has given several excellent, thought-provoking Profs and Pints talks on the Dune franchise.

To center Dune in the discussion, we’ll look at the character of Paul Atriedes as a ruler who has launched a jihad across known space to reconquer it. His prescient visions show him that although the spread of religious war is not optimal, neither is it the worst potential future for humanity, and he allows excess and violence to continue in his name out of a conviction that it’s for the greater good. Throughout the book on which the upcoming film is based, Atriedes struggles with his followers' desire to view him as a divine figure.

Dr. Herman, a trained theologian, will set such themes in the broader context of religious studies by discussing messianic figures across various religious traditions. Among them, Christianity names Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah, but he is hardly the first person in the canonical Bible given that title. Mainstream Judaism does not anticipate any similar, deified figure descending from heaven, but messianic strains of Judaism have looked for the arrival of a political liberator. Islam, from which Frank Herbert borrowed terms applied to Paul Atriedes, contains reference to someone serving not as a redeemer but as a heavenly guide. All branches of Buddhism situate within each new age of their cyclical cosmology a Buddha-yet-to-come.

We’ll look at the human tendency in confusing times to seek out direct, uncomplicated answers and to embrace messianism as part of apocalypticism, which foretells a straightforward sorting process in which believers, as good people, see reward while their enemies, as bad people, see punishment.

Dune fans will feel rewarded in coming to this talk. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Are Europe and Russia at War?” on an escalating overseas conflict and its implications for the United States, with Michael Kimmage, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, former U.S. State Department planner for Ukraine and Russia, and author of Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-europe-russia .]

The past few months have witnessed a dramatic escalation of the war in Ukraine, soon to enter into its fifth year. Europe is very much a party to that conflict, and Russia is flirting with actions that could push Europe closer to direct involvement.

Learn about the latest developments in that conflict and what they portend for Europe, NATO, and our own nation with Michael Kimmage, a former Catholic University historian who has given outstanding Profs and Pints talks on Ukraine in the past.

He’ll help you make sense of recent headlines regarding interruptions in Ukrainian access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, Ukraine’s attacks on Russian data centers, and President Trump’s agreement to purchase Russian diesel fuel and waiver of economic sanctions on Russia.

We’ll look at how Europe has assisted Ukraine in hitting targets inside of Russia, such as data centers and oil refineries, and how Russia has increased its sabotage and subversion efforts in Europe, recently mounting a failed attack on Germany’s Leipzig airport.

We’ll explore the open question of whether Europe and Russia are already at war with one another. If so, what will this mean for the war in Ukraine itself? What will it mean for the possibility that a Russia-Europe war could become a Russia-NATO war? How does it complicate the prospects of a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine in the foreseeable future?

We’ll also look at the difficult relations between Europe and the United States in the second term of President Donald Trump, from the recent White House deal to purchase Russian diesel to the possibility that Starlink access to Ukraine might be reduced or cut off, rendering it more vulnerable to Russian attacks. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A Lithuanian air defense battalion (Lithuanian Air Force photo / Wikimedia Commons).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Spirits Around the Place,” a look at East Slavic beliefs in supernatural creatures and haunted spaces, with folklorist Philippa Rappoport of George Washington University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-spirits-around-the-place .]

Traditional beliefs associated with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia hold that we’re seldom alone, even if no people are around. Instead, we’re nearly always surrounded by mythological beings. They can make our lives complicated and sometimes even injure or murder us, sometimes because we’ve annoyed them or, in other cases, just because that’s what they like to do.

Prepare to return to the days when you wondered what’s under your bed with this talk by Philippa Rappoport, an expert on Slavic folklore and rituals. She’ll describe how East Slavic culture long ago gave rise to beliefs in such mythological beings, known as “nature” or “place” spirits, who exert their influence on farmsteads, bathhouses, threshing barns, woods, water, and, yes, our own homes. Their presence was felt daily in the peasant’s world, and it still can be seen today in the ways in which people relate to home, space, and boundaries.

The real frightening fun will come when Dr. Rappoport introduces us to these supernatural beings, discussing their characteristics and the beliefs and traditions surrounding them.

We'll learn about the spirits of the home and homestead, such as the domovoi, a cranky spiritual master and protector of the home and hearth, and his counterpart of the yard, the dvorovoi. We'll talk about the bannik, the bathhouse spirit who presides over bathing and births but also sees saunas as a great place to strangle folks who don’t show him enough respect.

A little farther from home, we'll meet the spirits of the forests, waters, and fields. They include the leshii, master of the forest and its inhabitants, who might appear like a peasant, devil, or beast. Another spirit, the vodianoi, or “water devil,” is a bloated, shaggy, slimy water spirit that you’ll want to avoid at all costs.

We'll examine how these supernatural creatures are related to perceptions of space, boundaries, danger, and people who are categorized as “others” and shunned for it. We’ll gain insights on how people express fear of the unknown, and how such fear connects to xenophobia and some of the worst human behavior imaginable, deeds which render their perpetrators as monsters in their own right. It’s a talk that will give you an entirely new vantage point for viewing Slavic history and culture, and help you better understand the 19th- and 20th-century Russian propensity to close borders or punish by exile and gulag. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A bannik, or Russian bathhouse spirit, as drawn by Ivan Bilibin in 1934 (Wikimedia Commons).