Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Painting’s Pioneering Women,” on female artists who overcame barriers and changed their field, with Paloma Vianey, lecturer in George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-painting-women .]

Introductory art history courses tend to give short shrift to women, a legacy of the many centuries in which art collections disproportionately featured the works of men.

As a studio arts teacher, acclaimed interdisciplinary artist Paloma Vianey has sought to remedy that imbalance, teaching students about the lives and work of inspiring women artists while also encouraging them to observe artwork from the painters’ perspectives.

Join Vianey at Washington D.C.’s Penn Social for a look at the struggles and cultural contributions of women artists and how they have used painting as a tool for expression and healing.

She’ll discuss why learning about the contributions of women is imperative to understanding the field of painting and movements such as impressionism, surrealism, and conceptual art. She’ll dive into the lives and works of fifteen female artists who have had a huge impact in the last four centuries, describing how they created their images and changed their field.

Among the women you’ll learn about: Aurora Reyes, a poet regarded as the first Mexican muralist, who drew upon her impoverished upbringing to give her murals authenticity. Clara Peeters, a seventeenth-century artist who came to be regarded as a master in the nearly all-male field of still-life painting and took the brave step of incorporating self-portraits into her depictions of vases, goblets, and food. Emily Carr, who eschewed the traditional life she’d been expected to lead in the Victorian era to instead spend her life single and using painting to document the lives of Aboriginal villages.

Other artists who will be covered in the talk include surrealist Remedios Varo, conceptual artist Agnes Martin, modern artist Hilma af Klint, and Native American collage artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

You’ll learn how the field of Art History is being revised to give female artists their due and how contemporary art museums are emphasizing more of their work. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A 1787 painting by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun.

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Long Fight Over Voting Rights,” on today’s battles over political representation as part of a persistent struggle, with Jatia Wrighten, assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-long-fight .]

We often talk about election disputes as if they began only recently. The reality is that this nation’s fight over who gets to vote did not start yesterday and surely will not end with Donald Trump.

Learn how what feels like a modern crisis is actually a recurring theme of American history, and how the past offers lessons for the present and future, with political scientist Jatia Wrighten, a scholar of minority political representation.

You’ll learn how our nation has long been bitterly divided over questions related to who gets a voice in our government and how easy it should be to vote.

We’ll go back in time to the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, when the country engaged in debates over who counted as citizens and who had the right to vote. You’ll learn how during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s Americans were deeply concerned about the influence of big money, media, and corrupt political machines in elections. In the more recent past, we’ll look at how Black people fought for access to the ballot during the Civil Rights Movement.

To help you better understand what’s at stake in today’s debates, Dr. Wrighten will discuss how major shifts in political power can come about quietly through minor tweaks in the “machinery” of elections, including the rules governing voter registration, identification requirements, mail-in ballot management, and polling place locations. Gerrymandering—the practice of redrawing political maps to give one party an unfair advantage—also can have a huge impact.

This machinery is constantly being adjusted, influencing who finds it easy to vote and who faces significant challenges. Small tweaks in the rules brought about by politicians or the courts can change the outcome of an entire election before anyone even casts a ballot.

You’ll emerge from this talk better equipped to protect your vote by weighing in when the rules are debated. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A December 2011 voting rights protest in New York. Photo by Michael Fleshman / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Long Fight Over Voting Rights,” on today’s battles over political representation as part of a persistent struggle, with Jatia Wrighten, assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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

We often talk about election disputes as if they began only recently. The reality is that this nation’s fight over who gets to vote did not start yesterday and surely will not end with Donald Trump.

Learn how what feels like a modern crisis is actually a recurring theme of American history, and how the past offers lessons for the present and future, with political scientist Jatia Wrighten, a scholar of minority political representation.

You’ll learn how our nation has long been bitterly divided over questions related to who gets a voice in our government and how easy it should be to vote.

We’ll go back in time to the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, when the country engaged in debates over who counted as citizens and who had the right to vote. You’ll learn how during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s Americans were deeply concerned about the influence of big money, media, and corrupt political machines in elections. In the more recent past, we’ll look at how Black people fought for access to the ballot during the Civil Rights Movement.

To help you better understand what’s at stake in today’s debates, Dr. Wrighten will discuss how major shifts in political power can come about quietly through minor tweaks in the “machinery” of elections, including the rules governing voter registration, identification requirements, mail-in ballot management, and polling place locations. Gerrymandering—the practice of redrawing political maps to give one party an unfair advantage—also can have a huge impact.

This machinery is constantly being adjusted, influencing who finds it easy to vote and who faces significant challenges. Small tweaks in the rules brought about by politicians or the courts can change the outcome of an entire election before anyone even casts a ballot.

You’ll emerge from this talk better equipped to protect your vote by weighing in when the rules are debated. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A December 2011 voting rights protest in New York. Photo by Michael Fleshman / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Who Are the Houthis?” a guide to understanding Yemen’s rebel group and their impact on world politics, with Elana DeLozier, an adjunct professor of international relations courses at University of Virginia and the executive director of The Sage Institute for Foreign Affairs.

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

Join longtime Yemen expert Elana DeLozier for a talk that will give you a much greater understanding of that country’s Houthi rebels and how they grew from a local resistance movement into a group capable of reshaping global trade.

She’ll give you a crash course on a conflict you probably haven’t been following—Yemen’s long-running civil war—and discuss the role played in it by the Houthi movement that arose in the mountains of that country’s north.

From there you’ll learn how the Houthis emerged as a threat to global trade and came into direct conflict with the United States.
We’ll look at the strategic importance of the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and the Strait of Hormuz—the maritime chokepoints that have dominated headlines—and why they matter so much. We’ll also discuss the key players protecting the world’s trade routes and how geography still plays an outsized role in shaping global affairs.

You’ll walk away with both a better understanding of one of today’s most under-covered conflicts and a new appreciation for how the ripples from events in faraway waterways can reach our shores. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A 2015 Houthi protest in response to a Saudi-led coalition’s airstrike on Yemen (Voice of America photo).