Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Hidden Cleopatra,” an excavation through myth and slander to uncover the real Egyptian queen, with Jacquelyn Williamson, an Egyptologist and associate professor of archaeology and ancient art at George Mason University.

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

Depictions of Cleopatra are abundant in popular culture. A long list of painters have depicted her, Marilyn Monroe and Kim Kardashian have posed as her, and Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor famously portrayed her in Hollywood films.

At the end of the day, however, what most of us think we know about Cleopatra is wrong, the product of the ancient Rome’s “fake news” and anti-Egypt propaganda.

Learn about the real Cleopatra—and how our understanding of her came to be so distorted—with Professor Jacquelyn Williamson, scholar of women and power in ancient Egypt, teacher of courses on ancient Egyptian art and archaeology, and author of Nefertiti’s Sun Temple: A New Cult Complex at Tell el-Amarna.

Dr. Williamson will walk us through how the first Roman emperor, Octavian, created the distorted image of Cleopatra as seductress that we know today as part of his political scheming to defeat his rival Antony and end the Roman Republic once and for all.

Cleopatra has been the subject of debate and controversy ever since. William Shakespeare later relied on ancient Roman sources such as Horace and Plutarch in writing Antony and Cleopatra, and his play helped give rise to countless other works offering a distorted picture of her.

Professor Williamson argues that “Cleopatra was a human being, like you and I,” and “deserves the dignity of being represented as accurately as possible.” Her efforts to set the record straight have met frustration, however—after being extensively interviewed for the recent Netflix historical docuseries Queen Cleopatra, she concluded that it, too, had missed the mark.

You’ll gain a much deeper appreciation of the challenges of researching and accurately depicting the ancient past from Dr. Williamson, who also has taught at Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California at Berkeley and is involved with an ongoing archaeological investigation of Queen Nefertiti’s sun temple. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Layla Taj portrays Cleopatra VII as part of an Egyptian Cultural Performing Arts Society production. (Photo by Amos Gvili / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Everyday Supernatural,” a discussion of how folklorists and anthropologists view our belief in uneasily explained beings, forces, and experiences, with Benjamin Gatling, folklorist, scholar of belief and everyday religion, and associate professor of English at George Mason University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-everyday-supernatural .]

Profs and Pints debuts at Highline RxR bar in Arlington’s Crystal City with a talk that will both teach you and leave you thinking about your relationship with the unknown.

Have you ever wondered why people believe in the supernatural? Or where do such beliefs come from and what purposes do they serve?

On hand to offer answers will be Benjamin Gatling, who teaches a course on folklore and the supernatural, studies various cultures’ oral traditions, and serves as editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.

You’ll gain an understanding of how the supernatural isn’t something strange or extraordinary. It’s part of the everyday lives of most people around the world, and it’s fundamental to virtually all cultural traditions. Here in the United States, three out of four people believe in some aspect of the supernatural such as astrology, telepathy, clairvoyance, or communication with the dead. About half attest to having personally had a mystical experience.

In discussing the nature of supernatural beliefs, Dr. Gatling will talk about how our experiences are inexact and ambiguous and how we operate on incomplete information. In many ways belief in the supernatural represents an affirmation that human understanding extends beyond empirical observation and that we live in an imprecise, infinite, irrational, and mysterious world.

The goal of folklorists and anthropologists studying such beliefs is not to prove or disprove them, but rather to understand various peoples’ lived experiences and gain insight on how individuals make sense of the uncanny around them. Dr. Gatling will talk about such researchers’ findings in terms of how such beliefs are expressed in dream interpretation or the stories people tell about encounters with ghosts or their relationship with the dead.

He’ll talk about visits to haunted places and touch upon subjects such as UFO sightings, encounters with the divine, and magic in our everyday lives. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A deck of 22 Tarot cards. (Photo by Roberto Viesi / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Gaining Greenland, Losing a Continent?” on the historic roots and political drivers of an unexpected international crisis, with Garret Martin, senior professorial lecturer at American University’s School of International Service and co-director of its Transatlantic Policy Center.

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

Most Americans did not give much thought to Greenland prior to the start of President Trump’s second term. That changed, however, in the early weeks of January, when our nation’s President seemed intent on taking over the large island, long part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

His demands for the island risked tearing apart the transatlantic alliance, as shown during the Davos World Economic Forum. And while Trump eventually backed down, the crisis could resurface at any time.

Gain an understanding of how Greenland found itself in the position of being an international flash point with Garret Martin, an expert on Europe, NATO, foreign policy and transatlantic relations who has given excellent Profs and Pints talks in the past.

You’ll learn how the United States’ interest in Greenland has deep roots, dating back to expansion interests in the 19th Century, and strengthened by the island’s security role during the Cold War.

We’ll also look at how the abundance of critical minerals in Greenland make it the subject of particular attention, and how interest in Greenland is fundamentally tied to drastic changes occurring in the Arctic. Not only is climate change likely to significantly increase maritime traffic via northern routes, there also is growing concern that the increasing accessibility of the Arctic could make it a major source of military tension between great powers.

Finally, Dr. Martin will discuss Greenland as a story of emancipation, describing how the island has sought in past decades to carve greater autonomy from Denmark.

You’ll gain an appreciation of how Greenland sits at the intersection of economic security, environmental change, great power rivalry, tensions over sovereignty, and change within the transatlantic alliance, and thus is likely to remain the subject of considerable international attention well into the future. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Greenland’s coast as photographed by Robert Eime (Creative Commons).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Ethics of Good Sex,” a philosophical and practical guide to promoting pleasure while ensuring respect, with Quill R. Kukla, professor of philosophy and disability studies at Georgetown University and author of Sex Beyond ‘Yes’: Pleasure and Agency for Everyone.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-ethics-good-sex .]

Most discourse around sexual ethics—regardless of political orientation—focuses on how sex can go wrong and how we can avoid bad or harmful sex. Our sexual education emphasizes ensuring consent and taking “no” for an answer.

But as a society we spend almost no time discussing how to have good sex that is pleasurable for everyone involved and respects everyone’s agency. We are told to make sure that our partner says “yes,” but we are given no tools or roadmaps for what to do to have good sex, rather than minimally ethical sex, after that yes is given. We get no lessons on how to figure out what sexual activities we would actually enjoy, or for how to communicate about sex beyond asking for and giving consent.

Gain insights on how to take your discussions with sex partners to the next level with Quill Kukla, a philosopher and long-time participant in queer and kinky alternative sex communities who has written many scholarly and popular articles on sexual consent, communication, and ethics and who consults and gives workshops on safe, pleasurable, and ethical sex in the context of the Berlin club and rave scene.

We’ll examine how we can communicate about and enjoy good, pleasurable sex that respects the agency of everyone involved. Among the topics Professor Kukla will discuss: How to figure out what gives us pleasure; how to safely try out new activities that we’re not sure we will like; how to communicate well about sex with our potential partners; and how to manage power differentials within sex.

Looking ahead to future generations, Professor Kukla also will discuss how to raise children who will be capable of respecting their partners and of understanding and advocating for their own sexual desires and boundaries. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva