Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Emotional Literacy,” a research-based discussion of our feelings’ sources and impact on our overall well-being, with Tiffany McIntyre, adjunct professor at Towson University and practicing psychotherapist.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-emotional-literacy .]

Genuine emotional awareness has become challenging to foster in a culture shaped by chronic stress, urgency, and hyper-individualism. Many people lack the tools to recognize, label, and work with their inner experiences, setting the stage for conflict, burnout, disconnection, and relational strain.

Gain a deep understanding of what emotions are and why they matter by hearing psychotherapist Tiffany McIntyre draw from affective science, neuropsychology, and her own clinical experience to shed light on our inner worlds.

She’ll discuss how inadequacies in affective education, which focuses on the emotional and social development of students, have resulted in emotions being misunderstood, suppressed, or treated as personal failures rather than essential sources of information. She’ll describe how many adults today are learning for the first time how emotions shape behavior, relationships, and health.

You’ll learn to understand emotions as functional, biological, and psychological systems. We’ll discuss how emotions are constructed in the brain and body, what they are designed to signal, and why people vary so widely in emotional intensity, awareness, and regulation.

There’s a good chance you’ll feel better for having come to this talk. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30).

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Nightmares and Creativity,” on the relationship between frightening dreams and real creative achievements, with Bernard Welt, emeritus professor of arts and humanities at George Washington University, former member of the board of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and contributing editor of DreamTime.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-nightmares-creativity ]

Nightmares are associated with creativity—but how, exactly? Why do so many famous accounts of genius in the arts and sciences originate with a frightening dream?

Explore such questions with the help of Bernard Welt, who has taught courses on recalling dreams and dream journaling and written extensively on the relationship between dreaming and the arts.

Using excerpts from texts, illustrations of artworks, and clips from classic films derived from nightmares, Professor Welt will look at the relationship between bad dreams and celebrated innovations and creative accomplishments.

You’ll learn why psychologists consider the nightmare to be a key to understanding the creative power of the unconscious mind. We’ll consider sleep scientists’ definitions of the nightmare, asking why it still remains controversial, and explore contemporary theories about the relationship between nightmares and creativity from psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypal theory, evolutionary psychology, and other sources.

Though dreams have special authority in many cultures, in the western world it’s only among the nineteenth-century Romantics that we began to see personal accounts of creativity inspired by dreams—curiously, preponderantly bad ones. We’ll look at how Frankenstein arose from Mary Shelley’s famous dream of a scientist confronted by his own fearful creation, and how art’s Surrealist movement taught us to value our nightmares.

You’ll learn how dreams of all kinds can result in sudden inspiration because they relax inhibitions, transcend habitual trains of thought, and permit ideas that would be rejected by the thought processes of waking life. You’ll even come to see why we may welcome our nightmares as opportunities to expand our vision and our understanding. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: From Francisco Goya’s 1799 etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” (public domain).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Japanese Ghost Stories,” with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University and co-founder of the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-japanese-ghost-stories .]

Spend a winter night feeling chills down your spin. Join folklorist Brittany Warman, a favorite of Profs and Pints audiences, for a look at the eerie ghost stories of Japan.

You’ll get acquainted with several spirits and creatures that populate traditional Japanese folklore, among them: The Yuki-Onna, the sinister snow woman who dances on a knife-edge between murder and mercy. A fabulously beautiful samurai daughter who demands bravery and intellect from her future husband—but actually just might be a goblin. The spirit that haunts the cherry blossom tree, whose irresistible melancholy is “the phantom light of long-expired suns.”

You’ll also learn about the incredible life of Koizumi Yakumo, the storyteller who first made these traditional tales available to western audiences and helped popularize them around the world. Born in 1850 under the name of Lafcadio Hearn to an Irish officer-surgeon and a Greek woman, he led a wildly unconventional life. He travelled from Greece to the slums of Dublin to the newspaper offices of Cincinnati to the kitchens of New Orleans before settling in Japan, where he adopted Japanese citizenship and changed his name.

His life as a permanent outsider—and the hatred of prejudice instilled in him by it—shaped him as a storyteller. He became both a conduit of Japanese culture and a champion of the chilling and uncanny.

This deep dive in his life and the ghost stories he gathered and retold will be by turns frightening, hilarious, baffling, and poignant, and will make you understand why his tales remain beloved in Japan and the world over. It’s a great opportunity to become familiar with the ghosts of a nation and the man who told them to the world. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: A Japanese Yuki-Onna, or snow spirit, as depicted in the 1737 Hyakkai-Zukan, or book of demons, by Sawaki Suushi.

Profs and Pints Baltimore 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.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-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. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image by Canva.