What we’re about
Profs and Pints (https://www.profsandpints.com ) 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
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Profs & Pints Annapolis: America's Birth CertificateGraduate Annapolis, Annapolis, MD
Profs and Pints Annapolis presents: “America’s Birth Certificate,” an in-depth look at the Declaration of Independence and its impact, with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland.
[Tickets must be purchased online with processing fees and sales tax added. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/annapolis-declaration .]
The Declaration of Independence is a peculiar thing. It’s a literary masterpiece that was written jointly by a committee of fifty people. It’s short and punchy—just 1310 words long—but still somehow daunting and difficult to get a grip on. (There’s a reason most of us have never read it in full and can only quote the first third of its second sentence.)
And what is it exactly? Is it a birth certificate announcing happy news, or a petition for divorce full of grievance and score-settling? Is it aimed at the American people, or King George, or someone else? Was it the first ever declaration of independence, or a cheap imitation of a genre already well established? What did people at the time make of it? What did it change? Why does it still matter?
Rick Bell, a history professor who has given thrilling Profs and Pints talks on the Hamilton musical, the genius of Ben Franklin, and African Americans in the American Revolution, returns to the stage to answer these questions and more. He’ll set this uniquely American civic text in global perspective. He’ll discuss why the Declaration caused barely a ripple when it arrived in London, and how, in the months and years that followed, it became an example and inspiration to revolutionaries across the continent, the ocean, and the globe, with more than 100 other declarations of independence being issued in other parts of the world since 1776.
Our American Revolution—a modest change in political sovereignty in a few out-of-the-way agricultural colonies on the western rim of the Atlantic Ocean—occupies pride of place in the larger history of global decolonization and post-colonialism. You’ll have a much better grasp of why once you’ve learned about the fascinating origins, misunderstood purpose, and extraordinary global legacy of the Declaration of Independence.
Dr. Bell (a Brit with a vicious sense of humor) might even make you reconsider this whole independence thing in the first place. (Advance tickets: $13.50. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 4 pm and the talk starts at 5:30 pm.)
Image: “The Declaration of Independence,” painted by John Trumbull in 1818 and on display at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
