Profs and Pints Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Hell and Gone,” on American belief in damnation and doomsday, with Lindsay DiCuirci, associate professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and scholar of nineteenth-century spiritualism.

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

On highways across the American Midwest are giant billboards meant to inspire soul-searching. They carry messages such as “HELL IS REAL” and “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?” Although the share of Americans of people who believe in hell has been slipping for two decades, 59 percent of respondents to a 2023 Gallup poll still believed in its existence. On a related note, 55 percent of respondents to a 2022 Pew Research poll expressed the belief that Jesus Christ will return to earth someday as part of the earth’s apocalyptic ending.

Speculation about the afterlife and the world’s end has been the pastime of theologians, laypeople and charlatans for millennia. The enduring concepts of hell and the apocalypse have served as cultural barometers, measuring the status of all kinds of beliefs and behaviors far beyond those associated with organized religion.

Join Professor Lindsay DiCuirci, a scholar of early American literature and print culture and of the spiritualist movement of the nineteenth century, for a fascinating discussion of American beliefs about doom and damnation and their connection with broader worldviews.

We’ll start by looking at early colonial America, when Protestant Christianity predominated. You’ll learn how back then questions related to the end times and our fates after death were not simply personal or abstract, but factored into major societal conversations about art and literature, social reform, criminal justice, and foreign and domestic policy. We’ll discuss Puritan poet Michael Wigglesworth’s famous 1666 work “Day of Doom,” which scared generations of young Christians with its graphic depiction of fire and brimstone. Moving across the centuries, we'll look at abolitionist David Walker’s 1829 treatise “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” which called America itself “hell upon earth!!!” for people of color. You’ll gain an appreciation of how the rhetoric–if not the reality–of hell and the end times activated people’s conscience.

We’ll also examine how the concept of hell has always had its detractors, even among self-identified Christians. Some of its most vocal opponents were nineteenth-century spiritualists, a diverse and diffuse group of people who believed that they could speak with the dead. For spiritualists, the elimination of hell was a balm for those who are mourning but it also had great political potential. Many spiritualists were also radical reformers, working on issues like the abolition of slavery, women’s liberation, capital punishment reform, and indigenous rights. The idea that the soul not only lived forever but continued to learn and progress even after it was “disrobed of the body” invigorated their quest for social justice on earth.

Today, beliefs about hell and the end of the world remain entangled with questions about human suffering, the nature of justice, and the future of the planet. You’ll emerge from the talk with a richer understanding of how your views on various questions of our day are shaped by your assumptions about how it all will end. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Talk begins at 4:30. Attendees may arrive any time after 3 pm.)

Image: From “Pandemonium,” an 1841 John Martin painting of the capital of hell as described in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (Louvre Museum/Wikimedia).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Assisted Suicide for Mental Illness,” on a growing practice that raises huge ethical questions, with Mark Komrad, M.D., a psychiatrist and medical ethicist on the teaching faculty of the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins, Tulane, and Louisiana State universities.

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

In several European countries, physician-assisted suicide by oral prescription and euthanasia by lethal injection is being made available to psychiatric patients. Sometimes it’s even administered by their own treating psychiatrists.

Closer to home, Canada, which now offers euthanasia for some people who are chronically ill, plans to expand eligibility to those dealing only with psychiatric disorders in March 2027, and in some of its provinces church-based healthcare centers cannot refuse to offer euthanasia services. Currently four out of every 100 Canadians dies by medical euthanasia, making it the fifth leading cause of death in that country. Here in the United States, assisted suicide, available in twelve U.S. states to the terminally ill, has already been provided in one state to some psychiatric patients with anorexia.

Legal permission for doctors to help kill certain patients—or provide them with the means to kill themselves—represents a profound change in the fundamentals of 2300 years of medical ethics. Learn how professional medical organizations around the world have been responding, and become familiar with the ethical arguments for and against these practices, with Dr. Mark Komrad, a longtime medical ethicist who has published widely on the topic and helped craft the American Psychiatric Association’s position statement on it.

We'll look at specific data from Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, and the US, and see the way these practices have accelerated over time, profoundly altering these societies' attitudes towards mental illness, disability, and what lives are "worth living."

Among the vital questions we’ll explore: Are mental disorders ever truly terminal and their treatment ever really futile? Could failures in the mental healthcare system and social safety net push people to choose this way out? Does it undermine suicide prevention efforts to sanction suicide as a medical "treatment"?

What does it mean to be a psychiatrist if suicide can be provided and not just prevented? (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Talk begins at 4:30. Attendees may arrive any time after 3 pm.)

[If you are in distress Dial 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which provides 24/7 free and confidential support as well as prevention and crisis resources.]

Image: Photo by Zachary Nelson / Stocksnap

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Understanding Psychedelic Experiences” with David B. Yaden, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research and co-author of The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences: Twenty-First Century Research and Perspectives.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/psychedelics2/ .]

What happens during a psychedelic experience? How does it compare to other intensely altered states of consciousness, such as those triggered by meditation or dreams, or the ‘spiritual’ experiences that some people report?

Join Professor David Yaden, a leading scholar of psychedelics, as he shares insights from scientific research on them, highlighting key findings from psychology, neuroscience, and psychopharmacology.

Dr. Yaden will explore how these substances produce transformative effects on perception, emotions, and well-being. You’ll learn about recent studies examining the therapeutic potential of psychedelics and their role in triggering profound shifts in consciousness, and about psychedelics’ risks and benefits.

He’ll draw connections between psychedelic experiences and other altered states, citing examples drawn from different cultures throughout history and discussed in his book. (Doors: $17, or $15 with student ID. Talk begins 30 minutes after listed time.)

Image: Fractal artwork by Gert Buschmann / Creative Commons

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “When the Civil War Came to ‘Mobtown’,” on the infamous Baltimore incident known as the Pratt Street Riot, with Anne Sarah Rubin, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who teaches courses on Southern and Civil War history.

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

Although the American Civil War began in Charleston, South Carolina, it’s Baltimore that has the dubious distinction of being the site where the war's first blood was shed. The deaths came not as the result of military combat, but rather because ordinary Baltimoreans attacked troops from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts passing through the city.

Gain an in-depth understanding of this clash and its impact on the course of the Civil War in Maryland and elsewhere with the help of Anne Sarah Rubin, author of books such as Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory and A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868.

To help set up the story, Professor Rubin will discuss how as of the 1850s Baltimore had earned the nickname of “Mobtown” due to the presence of white, working-class gangs that fought over race, jobs, and politics. Many of the city’s residents found themselves sympathizing with the South—or at least opposed to war with it—when the Civil War began in mid-April 1861 with the fall of Fort Sumter in the face of bombardment by South Carolina’s militia.

President Abraham Lincoln called up troops in response to Sumter’s surrender, and on April 19, 1861, those passing through Baltimore on their way to Washington D.C. were attacked by a foe they had not expected: an angry Baltimore mob. Some troops opened fire in self-defense and by the end of the day at least 16 people were dead and more than 100 were wounded.

The riot’s impact on Baltimore lasted much more than one violent day. The city was placed under martial law, with the cannons on Federal Hill being turned around toward the city rather than out towards the harbor. Southern sympathizers were arrested and held in Fort McHenry, despite a federal court finding that such detentions were unconstitutional. The harsh treatment of them was memorialized in the poem “Maryland, My Maryland,” the state song until 2021.

Dr. Rubin will trace the course of the riots and examine their impact on civil liberties during the war and the future of the city thereafter. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From an 1861 F.F. Walker engraving of the Massachusetts Militia under attack in Baltimore (Wikimedia).