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 [email protected].
Thank you for your interest in Profs and Pints.
Regards,
Peter Schmidt
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Profs & Pints Annapolis: The Green Knight and Medieval YuleGraduate Annapolis, Annapolis, MD
Profs and Pints Annapolis presents: “The Green Knight and Medieval Yule,” a look at the Arthurian holiday legend and pre-Christian belief in “green men,” with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, visiting faculty at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and former professor of medieval literature.
[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/ax/ .]
The fourteenth-century Arthurian tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight captures the festive spirit of the Christmas season in a distinctly dramatic way, with the arrival at the court of King Arthur of a striking green visitor with holly branch in one hand and an ax in the other. Told in verse form, it’s a story full of references to holiday festivities, hunts, and romantic intrigue, and it’s rooted both in Christianity and pre-Christian ideas of green men with plant features.
Bring some added magic to your holiday season by coming to a talk that will immerse you in the strange tale of the Green Knight and the beliefs and symbols it draws upon.
Dr. Larissa Tracy, a medievalist who has extensively researched Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, will discuss how the poem set at Yuletide traces the pre-Christian calendar as Gawain waits a year and a day to face his Otherworldly opponent at the mysterious Green Chapel.
To provide broader cultural context, she’ll discuss how the image of the Green Knight has its roots in the Green Man, a pre-Christian figure that co-existed with Christianity—as seen in the dozens of examples carved into the stonework of Rosslyn Chapel, outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. Scholars have wondered at the seemingly contradictory presence of these images in a Christian site, but the Green Man is not at odds with medieval Christianity. It often figures as a facet of it—an embodiment of similar religious sentiments that intertwined over the centuries.
Whether you are a fan of Arthurian legends, enjoyed The Green Knight film released in 2020, or simply have an interest in how pagan nature beliefs live on in our culture, you’ll be glad you planted yourself down in the audience for this talk. Christmas trees and wreaths will wish they could be there. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 4 pm and talk starts at 5:30 pm.)
Image: A Green Man in the woodwork of England’s Lincoln Cathedral. Photo by Richard Croft / Creative Commons. (Green tint added.)
