Profs and Pints - Philadelphia

Profs and Pints Philadelphia presents: “The Happiness Workshop,” a look at what recent research and centuries of wisdom tell us about bringing more joy and contentment to our lives, with Eric Zillmer, professor of psychology and the director of the Happiness Lab at Drexel University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profs-and-pints-black-squirrel/happiness-workshop-2 .]

Are you happy? If not, how do you get there?

Gain insights into happiness with Eric Zillmer, an award-winning teacher who leads a creative think tank that investigates the ingredients for happiness among individual people and communities. He has graciously agreed to come back to the Fishtown’s Black Squirrel Club to deliver a talk on happiness that sold out and received rave reviews when he gave it last spring.

You’ll learn how the study of happiness is a growing, evidence-based field known as positive psychology, which aims to find solutions to happiness challenges that can bring positive change to our lives and environments.

Dr. Zillmer will discuss the meaning of happiness and its place in our lives and society. He’ll draw from recent science and great thinkers in discussing how we can increase our own happiness and well-being, throwing out a few practical tips as well.

He’ll talk about whether happiness can be measured and where in our brain happiness is located. We’ll look at the influence of socializing and social media on our happiness and about the roles that music, humor, adversity, and regret have in happiness research.

Dr. Zillmer will discuss what we learn about happiness from competitive sports, and he’ll suggest ten actions that you can engage in that will make you happier.

The talk coincides with an immersive installation by Dr. Zillmer at The Study at University City at 20 S. 33rd Street until November 15th . Titled “The Philadelphia Happiness Map,” it explores what makes people happy and the places in Philadelphia where they feel happiest.

Among the questions Dr. Zillmer will tackle in speaking at the Black Squirrel Club: What is the happiest day of the week? Can a specific place make you happy? What can we learn about happiness from travelling the world? (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Guests are welcome to arrive any time after 5:30. Talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: Happiness in the face of a Tibetan Buddhist monk. (Photo by Wonderlane / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints Philadelphia presents: “A Guide to Witches,” on the figure of the witch in history, legend, folklore, and fairy tales, with Linda Lee, lecturer in folklore and literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profs-and-pints-black-squirrel/philadelphia-guide-to-witches .]

Get ready for something spellbinding: A look at various depictions of witches as reflections of ideas about female sexuality, independence, agency, and power.

Offering up this pre-Halloween treat will be folklorist Linda Lee, who earned rave reviews in previously giving this talk at the Black Squirrel and has captivated audiences at this Fishtown venue with her past discussions of dark Christmas folklore and the goddess Persephone.

We’ll start with an introduction to witches from European folklore, fairy tales, and legends. You’ll learn how they’re generally portrayed as powerful, solitary, and defiant figures who can be either helpful or harmful. They may appear as mothers, helpers who aid heroes on quests, or monsters to be vanquished. They can represent a threat to the community by snatching children or by pilfering cows’ milk.

Individual witches who will be conjured up include the child-eating witch from Grimms’ “Hansel and Gretel” and Baba Yaga, the ambiguous witch of Slavic folklore who lives in a hut on chicken legs and flies around inside a giant mortar while clutching a big pestle. Lee contrasts such fictional depictions with the ideas about witches and witchcraft espoused by Christian demonological thought.

You’ll learn how witches are described by early modern sources like Malleus Maleficarum, the 15th-century treatise on witchcraft which also served as a witch hunters’ manual. Such texts presented witches as entirely malevolent figures who gain magical powers through a pact with the Devil (usually signed with menstrual blood). They depicted witches as using a special ointment that empowers them to fly to a Witches’ Sabbath to dance and perform demonic rituals.

You’ll see how such ideas were visually reinforced through engravings, woodcuts, and drawings, by artists like Albrecht Dürer, that depicted naked women riding broomsticks and dancing with devils.

You’ll come away with a better understanding of why witches are among the most versatile, notorious, and enduring figures from fairy tales and legends and remain an iconic part of contemporary Halloween traditions. Feel free to dress witchy if you wish. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5:30 pm. Talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: From “Preparation for the Witches' Sabbath,” by 17th Century Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger.

Profs and Pints Philadelphia presents: “Tales Told to Scare Children,” on centuries of stories describing frightening consequences for bad behavior, with Melissa Jensen, award-winning lecturer in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania and scholar of children's literature, the Gothic, and adolescence in media and society.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profs-and-pints-black-squirrel/philadelphia-tales-to-scare-children .]

There’s no rest for the wicked when it comes to bedtime stories. For centuries parents have left their children staring wide-eyed at bedroom ceilings by describing to them how the naughty and disobedient ended up in uncomfortable places such as burlap sacks or the bellies of wolves.

What’s up with this long tradition of telling tales that scare the wits out of kids?

Gather round children’s literature scholar Melissa Jensen at Fishtown’s Black Squirrel Club to get full story on how and why we deliberately use narratives to frighten children and on the impact of doing so.

She’ll harken all the way back to prehistoric cave paintings of humanoid figures that surely frightened young viewers. The real action, however, will begin with her discussion of Charles Perrault’s 1697 collection of fairy tales, Histories, or Tales of Past Times, and the 1812 publication of the first edition of Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm.

The stories gathered by the Grimms, especially, can be characterized as generally conveying the same basic message: “Do good or get dead.” They tapped into children’s tendency to have imaginary or supernatural fears as part of normal child development. People told such tales to get kids to behave—be it by staying out of the forest, shunning the evil, or simply minding their manners.

Many children have enjoyed hearing being told such stories, with plenty of research out there suggesting that they like to be scared for reasons related to endorphin release, a desire to see boundaries tested, or the emotional payoff that comes with being reassured that everything is okay. But there’s also plenty of research showing that such tales have left more than a few children traumatized and contributed to the development of anxieties and phobias.

Jensen will cover the gamut of such experiences in a talk that stirs the beasties that lurk beneath beds. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Guests are welcome to arrive any time after 5:30. Talk starts at 6:30.)

Profs and Pints Philadelphia presents: “The Life of Frankenstein,” on the birth, evolution and impact of a tale of man-made monstrosity, with Bernard Welt, an emeritus professor of arts and humanities at George Washington University who frequently lectures on Frankenstein in literature, cinema, and culture.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profs-and-pints-black-squirrel/philadelphia-life-of-frankenstein .]

Guillermo del Toro’s lush and lovingly produced film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is just the latest of many iterations of the story to capture the public’s imagination. People have watched Victor Frankenstein give life to his monster in numerous films, on television, and on stage, and even perform “Putting on the Ritz” with him thanks to the comic genius of Mel Brooks.

Mary Shelley did not just tell a tale. She spawned the modern genre of speculative fiction and gave rise to a myth that would crop up in debates over nature versus nurture and other matters. Even today it stokes anxieties over the potential impacts of robotics, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering, by evoking the image of a monster turning on its progenitor.

Come gain a new appreciation of Mary Shelley’s creation with the help of Dr. Bernard Welt, who has studied the relationship between nightmares and the horror genre and is the author of Mythomania: Fantasies, Fables, and Sheer Lies in Contemporary American Popular Art.

Dr. Welt will start by telling a literary origin story almost as famous as Frankenstein itself, of how an 18-year-old Shelley started writing Frankenstein in 1816 while staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with two of her era’s leading poets, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, her lover. Housebound by foul weather, the three read Gothic tales of ghosts and monsters and challenged each other to produce something even more terrifying. Mary dreamed up a story of a man who defied death by creating a living being out of scraps of deceased men harvested from graveyards and anatomy labs.

The resulting novel, Frankenstein, published anonymously in 1818, would by that century’s end become a touchstone in philosophical discourse on the nature of humanity and in political discussions of imperialism and populism. By the 21st century, Mary Shelley (as she became) had earned a more significant place in the literary canon than Byron and her husband Shelley.

We will examine how this grisly tale became a landmark of modern thought and look at the part played by numerous film adaptations from the first years of cinema to the present day. ( Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Door open at 3:30. Take begins at 4:30.)

Image: From a Theodor von Holst engraving in an 1831 edition of Frankenstein published by Colburn and Bentley of London.