About us
Profs and Pints brings professors and other college instructors into bars, cafes, and other venues to give fascinating talks or to conduct instructive workshops. They cover a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, popular culture, horticulture, literature, creative writing, and personal finance. Anyone interested in learning and in meeting people with similar interests should join. Lectures are structured to allow at least a half hour for questions and an additional hour for audience members to meet each other. Admission to Profs and Pints events requires the purchase of tickets, either in advance (through the ticket link provided in event descriptions) or at the door to the venue. Many events sell out in advance. Your indication on Meetup of your intent to attend an event constitutes neither a reservation nor payment for that event.
Although Profs and Pints has a social mission--expanding access to higher learning while offering college instructors a new income source--it is NOT a 501c3. It was established as a for-profit company in hopes that, by developing a profitable business model, it would be able to spread to other communities much more quickly than a nonprofit dependent on philanthropic support. That said, it is welcoming partners and collaborators as it seeks to build up audiences and spread to new cities. For more information email profsandpints@hotmail.com.
Thank you for your interest in Profs and Pints.
Regards,
Peter Schmidt, Founder, Profs and PInts
Upcoming events
1
Profs & Pints Nashville: The Odyssey’s Journey
Fait la Force Brewing, 1414 3rd Ave S St101, Nashville, TN, USProfs and Pints Nashville presents: “The Odyssey’s Journey,” on an epic poem and its many cultural destinations, with Chiara Sulprizio, principal senior lecturer in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University and teacher of courses on Greek mythology and on Homer and the Trojan War.
[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-odyssey .]
Christopher Nolan’s hit film adaptation of The Odyssey is but the latest of countless creative works that Homer’s epic poem has inspired over the past 2500 years. If seeing—or planning to see—the new film has left you yearning for a refresher on Homer’s poem and a discussion of why it resonates so powerfully, you’ll want to set a course for Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom.
Speaking on Homer’s foundational text and its enduring legacy will be Chiara Sulprizio, a scholar of the classics and antiquity who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on Roman gladiators and ancient Greek romance.
We’ll start by reviewing some of the basics about the Odyssey’s authorship, structure, and main characters. Then we’ll dive into a deeper discussion of its central themes, including nostos, or homecoming, and its relationship to Odysseus’ kleos, or glory.
We’ll look at Odysseus’ role as a different kind of hero and his signature quality of metis, or cleverness. You’ll become familiar with xenia, or the law of hospitality, and its importance to social relations in ancient Greece.
Dr. Sulprizio also will examine the central role of female figures like Penelope, Nausicaa, Calypso and Circe, who serve as both helpers and harmers in the poem.
Finally, we will explore the relationship between Homer’s epic and Nolan’s film, considering what Nolan changed, what he left out, and what stayed the same. We will also look at Nolan's choices in light of those made by other filmmakers who have adapted the epic, such as the Coen Brothers in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and more recently, Uberto Pasolini in The Return (2024).
In each instance, we will ponder the broader messages that these works want to convey to their audiences about love, war, and the human condition. We also will examine what they tell us about the similarities and differences between life in the modern world and life in late Bronze Age Greece. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)
Image: From an 1891 painting of Odysseus and the sirens by John William Waterhouse (National Gallery of Victoria / Public Domain).
30 attendees
Past events
262
