What we’re about
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 (3)
See all- Profs & Pints Nashville: Wrestler Vs. LawyerFait la Force Brewing, Nashville, TN
Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Wrestler Vs. Lawyer,” an evening devoted to court battles involving Hulk Hogan and other stars of the ring, with Professor Alex B. Long of the University of Tennessee College of Law, author of Professional Wrestling and the Law.
[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/wrestler-vs-lawyer ]
What happens when masters of the Sleeper Hold and Atomic Leg Drop find themselves up against those known for moves such as the subpoena, cross examination, and motion to dismiss?
Find out at Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom when law professor and legal scholar Alex Long delivers an entertaining overview of legal cases involving professional wrestling.
You’ll learn how the world of professional wrestling has a long and colorful history of lawsuits, ranging from sexual harassment and racial discrimination claims to intellectual property disputes and personal injury suits brought by fans injured at matches.
Professor Long will explore how kayfabe—the practice of maintaining the illusion that professional wrestling was a competitive athletic contest—has collided with the realities of the legal system over the years. He’ll talk about what happens when an industry with a long history of obscuring the truth bumps up against the legal system’s focus on arriving at the truth in any conflict. He’ll also help you understand the legal theories and procedures applied to legal disputes involving professional grapplers.
The main event will be a discussion of the legal battles of Hulk Hogan, among the most famous professional wrestlers ever and party to a disproportionate share of infamous lawsuits. We’ll look at the lawsuit that comedian Richard Belzer filed against Hogan after being injured by Hogan on his talk show. You’ll learn about the legal claims Hogan brought against his employer, World Championship Wrestling, over allegedly defamatory statements about Hogan made live during a pay-per-view event.
Perhaps the most famous lawsuit involving a professor wrestler was Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy claim against the website Gawker for its publication of a sex tape in which Hogan was featured. Professor Long will look at that case and the questions it raised about the controversial practice of investment companies (and fabulously wealthy Silicon Valley moguls) funding lawsuits for profit or revenge.
You’ll be glad you had a ringside seat for this event. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)
Image: Hulk Hogan in the ring as host in 2014 (Photo by Megan Elice Meadows / Wikimedia Commons).
- Profs & Pints Nashville: How Nashville Became Music CityFait la Force Brewing, Nashville, TN
Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “How Nashville Became Music City,” a scholarly examination of the historical forces that filled a city's streets with song, with Robert W. Fry, principal senior lecturer in musicology and ethnomusicology at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music and author of Performing Nashville: Music Tourism and Country Music’s Main Street.
[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-music-city .]
Nashville residents and tourists alike long have flocked to the city because of its thriving music scene and music-focused identity.
Come learn about the key players that transformed Nashville into a music destination with Robert Fry, a Vanderbilt musicologist who wrote a book on music throughout the city.He’ll draw upon his archival and ethnographic research as well as courses taught on subjects such as jazz, blues, country, American popular music, music in the South, music tourism, and DIY music cultures. He’ll explore the development of Nashville's broadcasting, recording, and tourism industries, as well as the city's adoption and promotion of its Music City identity.
You’ll learn about the musical institutions and spaces that put Nashville on music’s map as well as the what makes the city unique among other music destinations. We’ll talk about how Nashville's musical identity has been changing in the 21st century and how the city has been adapting to these shifts.
We’ll examine how the city's identity is being reinforced through immersive experiences on and near lower Broadway. We’ll also consider how fans have shaped the city and its experiences and helped save Nashville and its music following the flood of 2010.
Fry will offer a provocative proposal calling for fans to begin seeing themselves as locals so that they can move beyond passive roles as spectator to become more involved in the preservation and production of music here.
You'll leave it with a heightened appreciation of the city all around you and a better understanding of how to take it all in. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)
Image: Nashville’s famed Broadway Street. (Photo by Domenico Convertini / Creative Commons.)
- Profs & Pints Nashville: Ancient DNA and De-ExtinctionFait la Force Brewing, Nashville, TN
Profs and Pints Nashville presents: “Ancient DNA and De-Extinction,” on the quest to bring back dire wolves and other long-lost species, with Katie McCormack, ancient DNA researcher at Vanderbilt University and lecturer in the sociology and anthropology department at Middle Tennessee State University.
[Doors open at 6 pm. Talk starts at 7. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nashville-ancient-dna .]
Is it true, per last spring’s headlines, that we’ve actually revived the extinct dire wolf using ancient DNA? What does it mean if we did?
Come to Nashville’s Fait La Force taproom to hear such questions tackled by Katie McCormack, who writes about genetic ethics and the impact of genetic technology and whose own research combines genetics and archaeology to study our prehistoric ancestors based on their microbial DNA.She’ll introduce you to the field of ancient DNA (aDNA) research and bring you up to speed on efforts to reconstruct ancient genomes, the combinations of genetic information that helped make our hominid ancestors and other species what they were. She’ll give you an overview of the science that makes studying and using samples of ancient DNA possible and walk you through the history of efforts to find meaning in small fragments of DNA that survive in the archaeological record.
She’ll explore some of the major discoveries such technology makes possible and discuss efforts to bring back the dire wolf, the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and even Tyrannosaurus Rex.
You’ll learn about the Neanderthal-Human babies in your family tree, about research suggesting that seals brought Tuberculosis to the Americas, and why we almost certainly won’t be bringing T-Rex back any time soon. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)
Image: Skeletal remains of an extinct dire wolf on display at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Kansas. (Photo by James St. John / Creative Commons.)
