About us
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
Profs & Pints Annapolis: Ancient Terrors of the Night
Graduate by Hilton Annapolis, 126 West St, Annapolis, MD 21401, USA, Annapolis, MD, USProfs and Pints Annapolis presents: “Ancient Terrors of the Night,” an introduction to what terrified the Greeks and Romans of antiquity, with Barbette Stanley Spaeth, professor emerita of classical studies at William and Mary and scholar of magic and the supernatural in the ancient world.
[Tickets must be purchased online with processing fees and sales tax added, at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/annapolis-ancient-terrors .]
Literature, papyrus scrolls used for magic, and archaeological finds show that ancient Greeks and Romans believed in demons, ghosts, vampiric beings, reanimated dead, shape‑shifters, and night‑hags.
Get to know what might have spooked Nero or Sophocles with the help of Barbette Stanley Spaeth, who has spent 25 years researching, teaching, and publishing on the supernatural of antiquity.
Dr. Spaeth, who previously has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks, will make clear that ancient Greek and Roman tales of the “terror that comes in the night” were not relegated to folklore but woven into religion, law, medicine, and the sincere practice of magic. These stories explained the unexplained, enforced social norms, and supplied tools for protection or attack such as amulets, curse tablets, exorcisms, and other various spells.
You’ll learn how belief in daimones (demons) went from regarding them as ambiguous, semi‑divine beings to assigning them malign character and making them the targets of exorcism. People thought the dead returned as incorporeal spirits or ghosts as a result of improper burials or in response to unresolved business with the living, and that they also could be exorcised with the proper rituals. Necromancy typically summoned such shades to ask them for information, yet texts also describe how animated corpses were harnessed to harm others, becoming ancient analogues of vampiric or zombie threats.
We’ll discuss how witches and magicians were believed to shape-shift into a variety of creatures—including wolves, owls, and weasels—to carry out their dark deeds.
The most frightful of all, however, may have been the night hags, who were blamed for sleep assaults, drained vitality, sexual violence, and the kidnapping and torture of children to derive ingredients for magic.
You’ll emerge from the talk with an understanding of how our modern terrors of the night are drawn from a long, complex classical heritage as refracted through centuries of reinterpretation as well as various local traditions. (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: An 1898 painting by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl depicts souls on the banks of the Acheron, a river, associated with Hades, where necromancy was practiced.
14 attendees
Past events
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