Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Folktales of Summer Forests,” 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/nv-summer-forests .]

Unique folklore emerges from the summer months, when the sun burns hot and nature bursts with full, lush beauty. Some of this lore is strange, some of it tragic, and some as beautiful as sunlight through branches.

Wander deep into the folklore of summer with Brittany Warman of the Carterhaugh School, an extraordinary educational organization which has earned a large and loyal following among Profs and Pints fans with its captivating talks on folktales, fairy tales, legends, and myths.

We’ll look at why the forest stands as the perfect setting for enchantment and mystery. It’s by turns a place of shade and rest and a place of uncertainty and fear. It can be dangerous, bountiful, tame, or wild. It shelters witches, fairies, monsters, and more under its branches.

From the forest come the legends of the illusive Green Man, the king of the woods. Also told are stories of sacred trees, hidden dances, and fairies who engage in midsummer abductions. Fairy tales like “The Witch in the Woods” and “The White Deer” tell of hidden doorways, magic rings, and cursed princesses.

Let Dr. Warman guide you through magical forests and you’ll emerge seeing the wonder in every leaf, stream, and wildflower. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: "Fairies in a Bird's Nest," an 1860 painting by John Anster Fitzgerald.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Maintain Your Brain,” a research-based guide to nurturing your brain and staying sharp as you age, with Dr. Majid Fotuhi, adjunct professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University’s Mind/Brain Institute and author of The Invincible Brain.

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

Most people assume memory loss is inevitable with age, but that’s not the case. Dramatic leaps forward in brain research over the past decade have produced a host of both surprising and actionable findings related to brain health and resilience.

If you are concerned about your brain’s long-term health or looking after aging parents, you won’t want to miss this upcoming Profs and Pints talk. The speaker, Dr. Majid Fotuhi, is a neurologist and neuroscientist who has spent four decades studying Alzheimer's disease, memory, and the science of brain resilience. He developed a 12-week clinical program that has helped hundreds of patients improve on objective cognitive tests and experience MRI-confirmed increases in the volume of their hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.

You’ll learn how the brain has a remarkable ability to grow new connections, increase in volume, and recover from years of neglect—a property called neuroplasticity. At the same time, even a single night of poor sleep causes a measurable buildup in the brain of amyloid, the protein linked to Alzheimer's.

Dr. Fotuhi will describe how our understanding of neuroplasticity has greatly increased since ten years ago, when the prevailing view in medicine was that the adult brain is essentially fixed, a finished product that could only decline with age. Thanks to subsequent clinical trial data we now know that what we eat, how we sleep, whether we exercise, how we manage stress, and how much cognitive stimulation we experience all directly reshape brain structure and function. Efforts to tend to these areas can improve memory scores and reverse early cognitive decline in people who were already showing Alzheimer’s symptoms.

These are not small effects seen in obscure journals. Many of these findings come from institutions like Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and the National Institutes of Health, and they are reshaping how neurologists think about prevention and treatment.

Among the questions Dr. Fotuhi will tackle: Is Alzheimer's disease really preventable? Can you reverse early memory loss with lifestyle changes alone? Why does chronic stress quietly damage your brain even when you feel fine? ( 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 Northern Virginia presents: “Be a Man,” on the history of American efforts to define masculinity, with Luxx Mishou, cultural historian 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://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-be-a-man .]

There has never been just one way to “be a man,” but there sure have been plenty of attempts to convince men and boys that such a single definition exists.

Throw on your work boots, roll up your sleeves, and get ready to strut confidently into Sterling’s Crooked Run Fermentation for a fascinating look at our nation’s shifting visions of manhood and what they tell us about ourselves.

Dr. Mishou, whose engaging previous talks have earned her a considerable following among Profs and Pints fans, will start by looking at colonial times and the conventions of masculinity that we inherited from Europe. She’ll discuss how in the lead-up to the American Revolution people here began articulating a new definition of masculinity intended to help forge a communal identity. To set us in opposition to the British, they rejected the classism and intellectualism associated with the men of England and defined masculinity in very physical terms.

From there, Dr. Mishou will familiarize us with the nineteenth century’s dandies and secret societies. Moving ahead to the twentieth century, she’ll show how concepts of manhood were further honed by public figures such as the escape artist Harry Houdini and the strongman Eugen Sandow, regarded as the father of bodybuilding.

She’ll compare physical masculinities and intellectual masculinities and look at how definitions of masculinity factored into our romanticization of the “wild west” and our worship of the outlaws and rebels of Hollywood fiction. She’ll describe how views of masculinity have been shaped by various political and religious leaders.

Turning her attention to the present, Dr. Mishou will examine today’s “crises” of masculinity and the influences of various cultural phenomena such as “muscular Christianity” and Marvel movies. She’ll explore how various concepts of masculinity relate to various intersectional identities, considering black masculinity, queer masculinity, Hispanic masculinity, trans masculinity, and disabled masculinity.

Among the questions this talk will tackle: When it comes to masculinity, does life imitate art, or does art imitate life? Why do men want to talk about Fight Club? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From an 1894 poster advertising strongman Eugen Sandow’s vaudeville act (Wikimedia Commons).

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Those Who Gave Rise to Our Navy,” on the men who set sail for the American Revolution and their fates, with Abby Mullen, assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and author of To Fix a National Character: The United States in the First Barbary War, 1800-1805.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-navy-rise .]

Their ranks were Black as well as White and included the young and the old, the offspring of incredibly wealthy merchant families as well as the all-but-destitute. The British government called them pirates and charged them with treason. Even George Washington referred to some of them as rascals. Yet all were willing to take to sea and take great risks as sailors in the fight against Great Britain.

Why did they do it?

As we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, join Professor Abby Mullen, who teaches Annapolis midshipmen classes on naval history, to become familiar with the kinds of people who joined our Navy at the outset, at great risk.

We’ll look at where American Revolutionary sailors came from, what motivated them to go to sea, and what happened to them during their service. We’ll examine the many ways they could serve as part of the Continental Navy, as part of state navies, or as privateers.

Finally, we’ll look at what happened to them in the long run, and how some ended up imprisoned by the British after being captured while others were discharged from their ship after the war as the Continental Navy got sold off bit by bit. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A 1779 naval battle involving American and British ships as painted by Richard Paton in 1780 (Royal Academy / Public Domain).