Profs and Pints - Nashville

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Love and Lust in Ancient Greece,” with Chiara Sulprizio, senior lecturer in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University and scholar of ancient gender and sexuality.

The ancient Greeks revered the goddess of love, Aphrodite. They believed her erotic power to be the most powerful force in the universe, even surpassing the powers of Zeus, and they celebrated this force with a singular passion in their art, literature, and sex lives.

Join Chiara Sulprizio of Vanderbilt University for a thrilling exploration of how love and desire were imagined, discussed, and experienced by men and women in ancient Greece—at all levels of society, from the humblest slaves to the highest aristocrats.

We will consider the socialization of girls and boys, and how the institution of marriage, as well as the threat of adultery, shaped the course of ancient Greeks’ lives.

We will also examine the importance of the phallus in this patriarchal culture, and its defining role as a symbol of male dominance, fertility and fortune.

Dr. Sulprizio will discuss the practice of pederasty and why it was so prevalent a feature of elite Greek identity. She also will investigate the lives of ancient prostitutes and consider the mystery of women’s erotic experiences, explaining why they are so difficult to trace in the historical record.

Finally, we’ll consider the various ways that ancient ideas about love and eroticism remain alive in our culture today. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: A Dionysian scene on an ancient Greek vase (Bavarian State Collections of Antiquities).

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “The Occult Mother Goose,” on the twisted origins of many nursery rhymes, with Cory Thomas Hutcheson, folklorist, lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University, and author of New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-mother-goose ]

We may think of Mother Goose as a sweet old woman adorning the cover of children’s books. The truth, though, is that she’s got more than a few tricks up her tatted lace sleeves. Rooted in pre-Christian myths from Germany and Scandinavia, she has deep connections to witchcraft and magic.

The nursery rhymes collected in the books that bear Mother Goose’s name are no sickly-sweet lullabies for bouncing babies, either. Many are derived from old magic spells, creepy legends about terrifying child-eating monsters, or horribly tragic events, despite being transmuted over time into innocent-seeming songs, dances, and games.

Join folklorist Cory Thomas Hutcheson, whose great past talks have earned him a loyal following among Profs and Pints fans, for a night that might forever change how you think about blind mice, mulberry bushes, and Jack and Jill. Delving into a weird world of cursed couplets and revolting rhymes, he’ll look at the mythic origins of Mother Goose and explore some of her weirdest wordplay and eeriest entries.

We’ll look at fortune-telling poems that promise to predict the future husband of those who “make a rhyme, make a rhyme, see your beau before bedtime.”

We’ll consider poems that warn of summoning evil: “Speak of a person, and he will appear. Then talk of the devil, and he’ll draw near.”

You’ll have a great time learning all sorts of wicked history and lore. Cross our hearts and hope to die! (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image from Unsplash (Creative Commons).

Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Ireland’s Easter Rising,” on a pivotal moment in Ireland’s fight for independence, with Mark Doyle, professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University, scholar of Irish history, and author of Fighting like the Devil for the Sake of God: Protestants, Catholics and the Origins of Violence in Victorian Belfast.

[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-ireland-rising ]

During Easter Week of 1916, a time when hundreds of thousands of other Irishmen were fighting on Britain’s behalf on the First World War’s Western Front, a small band of rebels staged an armed anti-British rebellion in Dublin.

Their goal was to rid Ireland of the British domination that it had been under in one form or another for nearly 800 years. Although in the short-term their uprising ended disastrously, in the long-term it managed to inspire a largely successful fight for independence.

Learn in depth about this rebellion and how it altered Ireland’s history with Professor Mark Doyle, a scholar and teacher of Irish and British history who has conducted extensive research in Dublin and Belfast. He’ll explain the background, course, and legacy of the Easter Rising, which will mark its 110th anniversary next month.

You’ll learn how the leaders of Ireland’s Easter Rising sought to occupy key places around Dublin in hopes of sparking a general uprising and persuading Germany, Britain’s enemy in the Great War, to help their cause. Their plan failed because not only did no island-wide rebellion occur, but most Dubliners scorned them as reckless adventurers. In less than a week, hundreds of rebels were killed and thousands arrested, with central Dublin being left a smoking hull.

The Easter Rising was, by most measures, a dismal failure. But in the weeks and months that followed something remarkable happened. Britain’s brutal suppression of the rising, combined with the dignified way in which the rebel leaders met their deaths and skillful organizing by surviving rebels and other Irish nationalists, eventually caused the Easter Rising to be seen not as a tragic farce but as the first blow in a longer struggle.

Dr. Doyle will shed light on how a doomed band of rebels lit the flame that eventually consumed the whole island. He’ll examine what their memories mean today in an Ireland that, despite having changed utterly from what it once, still struggles to realize the lofty goals of the men and women of 1916. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: From the “Easter Proclamation of 1916” issued by those involved in the rising.