Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Queer Country,” on the long, often-hidden presence of LGBTQ+ performers in country music, with Tanya Olson, lecturer in English and scholar of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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

Although country music is often thought of as conservative, rural, and straight, queer artists have always been part of its story.

Learn about the important role that queer artists, their ideas, and their experiences have played in country music with Tanya Olson, a cultural critic whose recent work explores the intersection of country music, identity, and tradition.

She’ll talk about queer artists across generations, describing how they are hidden and what it means to stand in the circle of tradition without being seen. She’ll explore how queerness shows up in the songs, stories, and sounds of country music even when it isn’t named, and also what’s at stake when those threads are left out of the history we tell.

You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of country music’s past, as well as a sharper eye for who’s been missing from the picture all along. You’ll gain an appreciation for why inclusion in country radio and the Grand Ole Opry matters, as well as an understanding of how a queer presence might strengthen, rather than threaten, country music's legacy.

Olson’s latest book of poetry, Born Backwards, builds on the language and imagery of country music to ask who gets remembered and why. Learning from her will make for a memorable evening. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Country artist k.d. lang performs in 2008 as part of the Cambridge Folk Festival (Photo by Bryan Ledgard / Creative Commons).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Satanic Panics,” a look at waves of fear of demonic activity as an American tradition, with Luxx Mishou, cultural historian and former instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy and area community colleges.

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

The 1980s found the United States gripped by fear of Satanic cults targeting children. They were believed to be corrupting young ones in daycare centers and tempting teens through subliminal messages on heavy metal albums or through the quiet inclusion of demonic rituals in role-playing games. Satanic serial killers supposedly stalked the suburbs. Doctors helped patients uncover what were claimed to be repressed memories of ritualistic satanic abuse.

Parents, police, and politicians were urged to protect impressionable youths from both moral and physical danger. With Satanic cults deemed to be a real and material threat, it was a frightening time for everyone, including those who suddenly came under suspicion for doing evil deeds.

Then, suddenly, it all faded from public consciousness, just as surely as did eighties fads such mullet haircuts, leg warmers, and Cabbage Patch Kids.

Why did it all start? Why did it stop? And has this happened before or since?

Hear such questions tackled by Luxx Mishou, a cultural historian and media specialist who has long researched the devious and villainous in cultural artifacts. She’ll discuss moral panics as a longstanding cultural tradition, with each new one stemming from fear of cultural shifts and shaped by the time and place where it occurred. Among the panics we’ll look into are the Red Scare of the 1950s and the public response to the gruesome 1969 murders committed by the Manson Family.

Delving into the 1980s panic, Mishou will describe how it began with the 1980 publication of psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder’s memoir Michelle Remembers, detailing the suppressed memories of ritualistic abuse reportedly suffered by a patient. As that book quickly became a best seller, its ideas saturated American culture. A California daycare center became the focus of a three-year investigation, followed by three years of trials, based on allegations that its owner had engaged in secret ritualistic abuse of the children in its care.

Mishou will lead you through the media that convinced the public that devil worshipers were among them, and she’ll talk about how reactions to imagined threats can have very real social costs. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia 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://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-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. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

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

Profs and Pints DC presents: “A Practical Guide to Social Change,” a research-based look at how communities bring about reform and progress, with Marissa Robinson, founder of Real Health Impact LLC and an adjunct professor at George Washington University who teaches courses focused on public health leadership and social change.

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

Systems built on inequality rarely transform without deliberate pressure from the people most committed to justice, because progress takes coordination, conviction and willingness to change what has always been accepted. Real change starts when people choose to move together.

Learn what research and experience say about how to make real social progress with Dr. Marissa Robinson, a public health practitioner who previously worked in federal agencies coordinating global and national public health initiatives focused on infectious diseases, HIV, and health equity.

Among the key questions she’ll tackle: How do communities overcome barriers to create real change? When should evidence guide decisions and when does context matter more?

She’ll discuss established frameworks for moving from intention to measurable progress and talk about the importance of building coalitions that actually work and of making decisions grounded in real data. You’ll learn about the importance of testing ideas on a small scale before going big, as well as how to use rapid feedback loops and continuous improvement cycles to refine approaches and scale what truly works.

Dr. Robinson will share stories of ordinary people and communities who refused to accept the status quo and pushed through real barriers to achieve breakthrough results. She’ll talk about practical strategies, usable frameworks, and evidence-based examples that people can apply immediately in their own communities and organizations to support change that lasts.

If you have dreamed about bringing about progress in your world, this talk will give you the clarity, direction, and confidence it takes to turn such dreams into reality. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.