Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Witches of Antiquity,” on the sorceresses of ancient Greece and Rome, with Barbette Stanley Spaeth, professor emerita of classical studies at William & Mary and scholar of magic and the supernatural in the ancient world.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-witches-of-antiquity .]

Seductive enchantress. Murderous sorceress. Corpse-mangling hag. The witches of the ancient world were among antiquity’s most vivid and disturbing characters.

Get to know some of antiquity’s most unforgettable women with the help of Barbette Stanley Spaeth, who last year gave fantastic Profs and Pints talks on ancient magic and ancient terrors of the night.

We’ll spend time with Homer’s beautiful Circe, Euripides’ passionate Medea, and Horace’s sinister Canidia. You’ll encounter Lucan’s terrifying Erictho, a witch so powerful she could raise the dead and force even the gods to obey her.

Along the way, we’ll ask why the image of the witch changed so dramatically as it traveled from Greece to Rome. Greek writers often imagined witches as beautiful, alluring, and sometimes even helpful. Roman authors, on the other hand, increasingly portrayed them as ugly, lustful, dangerous old women. What can these frightening figures tell us about ancient attitudes toward magic, women, sexuality, and power?

The answers take us beyond spells and potions into some of the deepest anxieties of the ancient world, about women who possessed power, men who feared losing it, and what might happen when accepted boundaries—between male and female, human and divine, living and dead, and even order and chaos—began to break down.

For over thirty years at William & Mary and Tulane University, Dr. Spaeth taught courses on ancient magic and the supernatural. She has published several studies of ancient witchcraft and is currently working on a book on the subject. Her talk is sure to leave you spellbound. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From “Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus,” an 1891 painting by John William Waterhouse (Gallery Oldham / Public Domain).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Horror in the East,” a look at truly frightening Buddhist beliefs and rituals, with Justin McDaniel, professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of the Penn Ghost Project, and former Buddhist monk.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-horror-in-the-east .]

Profs and Pints is bringing to Penn Social one of its most fascinating speakers, Professor Justin McDaniel, a former Buddhist monk whose teachings about macabre Eastern beliefs and practices are sure to expand your horizons when it comes to horror.

Westerners often regard Buddhism as a religion of peace, meditation, and compassion. While this is often true, it ignores the horrific and phantasmagoric side of many Buddhist rituals and beliefs. Those include practices such as meditating on corpses, strolling through giant “Hell Gardens” filled with terrifying images, and telling stories about haunting and highly sexualized ghosts. It’s no wonder that Buddhist countries produce some of the most violent horror films in the world.

Professor McDaniel will give an entertaining and highly visual talk looking at the ways in which Buddhists in Japan, Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Singapore, and other places embrace the macabre. You’ll leave with a much richer understanding of Buddhism and the cultures and worldviews that gave rise to horror movies that can scare the wits out of you.

Dr. McDaniel has lived a life that gives him distinct expertise on this subject matter. He has published award-winning books on meditation, ghosts, and Buddhist literature, and he studies Buddhist art and translates Buddhist manuscripts. He lived for many years in Southeast Asia, where he conducted research as a Fulbright Fellow, taught and translated, and became a Buddhist monk. He also has regularly given cemetery tours and founded the Penn Ghost Project, an interdisciplinary effort to study beliefs in spirits from the beyond.

His talk will give you a much richer perspective on horror as a worldwide phenomenon. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Punishment depicted in the hell garden at Aluvihara Rock Cave Temple in Sri Lanka (Photo by istolethetv/ Creative Commons).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Macabre Poe,” a look at Edgar Allan Poe’s most gruesome and horrifying works and what inspired them, with Amy Branam Armiento, professor of English at Frostburg State University, past president of the Poe Studies Association, and editor of two books on the acclaimed American author.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-the-macabre-poe .]

Stephen King has said that he and other horror writers are all “the children of Poe,” a reference to how they’re unable to escape his shadow. Although Edgar Allan Poe penned works in a long list of genres, including fantasy, detective fiction, and poetry, his most prominent legacy is as the master of the macabre. Over the nearly two centuries since Poe lived, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Masque of the Red Death” have haunted millions of readers.

Who, exactly, was Poe? Why does he remain as one of the United States’ best-known writers at home and abroad? Why do his works continue to resonate with readers more than 150 years after they were published?

Come hear such questions tackled by Amy Branam Armiento, a leading Poe scholar who edited More Than Love: The Enduring Fascination with Edgar Allan Poe, co-edited Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision, and formerly served as president of an international organization that supports the scholarly and informal exchange of information on Poe’s life, works, times, and influence.

Professor Armiento will look at which people and events influenced Poe’s literary works. His troubled life included the slow deaths of his mother, brother, foster mother, and wife, as well as a problematic relationship with alcohol and a difficult relationship with his foster father. All shaped his relationship with death, horror, and the unknown.

She'll also look at how Poe’s horror tales laid the groundwork for the characters, circumstances, and other conventions of horror stories. We’ll explore how Poe shattered literary conventions of his own time by embracing lurid descriptions of violence, especially violence perpetrated between family members and loved ones. You’ll learn how Poe adapted conventions of the fairy tale to create his memorable, haunting tales, an aspect of his work that is hidden in plain sight.

The presentation will also include examples of evocative artwork used to illustrate editions of Poe's works. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Poe as depicted in a modern retouched version of a daguerreotype by Mathew Benjamin Brady. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Medieval Monsters,” with Lilla Kopár, a professor of medieval literature and culture at Catholic University who teaches courses on medieval monster lore and Norse mythology.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-medieval-monsters .]

Bar the door and clutch your sword. Profs and Pints is about to bring you a visit from the monsters that kept medieval people awake throughout long, dark nights.

Your guide in touring this menacing menagerie will be Dr. Lilla Kopár, an expert on early medieval England and Scandinavia who teaches Catholic University’s students about things that terrified in days of yore.

Dr. Kopár’s illustrated talk will explore the origins of medieval monster lore in the classical, biblical, and Norse mythological traditions. It also will give us a much more nuanced understanding of monsters, explaining how we don’t just fear them, but love them and badly need them in our lives.

Among the questions Dr. Kopár will tackle: What, exactly, is a monster? Where do monsters come from? Why do all cultures treat them as serving a valuable purpose?

She’ll discuss how monsters are highly functional constructs. They help us define who we are and who were aren’t, and to explain, structure, and control the world around us. They highlight differences and they mark cultural categories and boundaries—which they then trespass. We can project our fears onto them and then feel better when we confine and kill them. Without monsters there are no heroes.

We’ll encounter categorization-defying monsters that are a mixture of beasts or half beast and half human. We’ll spend time with famous literary monsters, including dragons, giants, and the monsters of Beowulf and the King Arthur legends. We’ll get to know monsters that found a place on old maps or the sides of cathedrals.

On the much darker side, we’ll learn how monstrosity was attributed to people who were somehow different—through disease, disability, or belief in another religion—often as a means of justifying their exclusion or persecution. Sometimes belief in monsters turned people into monsters themselves. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A gargoyle at England’s Magdalen College. (Photo by Chris Creagh / Wikimedia Commons.)