Profs and Pints Baltimore

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://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/assisted-suicide .]

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: “The Bagpipe of Ireland and Scotland,” on the intertwined roots of two cultures and an instrument that unites them, a talk and performance by Edward Kitlowski, scholar of Scottish and Irish history and director of the US Naval Academy Pipes and Drums band.

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

Come to Profs and Pints to gain a richer understanding of a stirring sound you hear whenever Saint Patrick’s Day and National Tartan Day—the annual April 6th celebration of Scotland’s 1320 Declaration of Independence—come around.

Learn about the bagpipe as a legacy of the shared history of Ireland and Scotland with Ed Kitlowski, an accomplished bagpiper and pipe major who studied Scottish and Irish history at the University of Edinburgh and has published articles on the bagpipe’s history.

He’ll take you back in time to when the Irish and Scottish people considered themselves to be the same and he’ll look at key aspects of their shared history. You’ll learn how research using Roman records has identified Saint Patrick’s birthplace as being in Scotland, how an Irish cleric brought Christianity to Scotland, and how the word Scot comes from the Irish who settled in Scotland, bringing their culture and language.

The Gaelic Scots and the Irish continued to remain connected during throughout the Middle Ages, often to the dismay of the English and Lowland Scots. You’ll learn about the forces that separated Ireland and Scotland and how the bagpipes continued to be a unifying factor between them and, later, between the Catholics and Protestants in Ulster and the Republic of Ireland.

Focusing his attention on the instrument itself, Kitlowski will tell discuss the bagpipe’s workings, play some notes in illustrating key points during his talk, and break into a performance at the end.

Don’t worry. There’s absolutely zero chance you’ll sleep through this class. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. The talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: A bagpiper in the Scottish Highlands. Photo by Javier Rodríguez / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Life of Barbie,” on a plastic icon and her cultural legacy, with Emily Aguiló-Pérez, an associate professor of English at West Chester University of Pennsylvania who has extensively researched Barbie as a scholar of childhood, media, and popular culture.

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

Few toys have shaped culture quite like Barbie has. From her debut in 1959 to the billion-dollar success of the 2023 film bearing her name, Barbie has been a mirror of society, a lightning rod for controversy, and a symbol of transformation. She often has found herself at the center of society’s evolving conversations about gender, race, consumerism, and identity.

Get to know Barbie like you never did before with the help of Emily Aguiló-Pérez, the author of An American Icon in Puerto Rico: Barbie, Girlhood, and Colonialism at Play and the forthcoming books Barbie in the Media and Barbie and Social Media.

Drawing from more than a decade of scholarly research on Barbie’s significance in global contexts, Professor Aguiló-Pérez will discuss Barbie’s evolution from fashion model to feminist (and anti-feminist) flashpoint. While Barbie wasn’t originally designed as a feminist toy, she would emerge as an emblem of female empowerment, with the first astronaut Barbie, produced in 1965, exploring space before Neil Armstrong visited the Moon. At the same time, she would continue to face criticism for reinforcing restrictive beauty norms, with her measurements remaining unrealistic even in the "body diverse" versions of the doll—curvy, petite and tall.

We'll explore Barbie’s shifting cultural impact—her role in shaping beauty standards, gender expectations, and consumer culture. You’ll learn about Barbie’s global influence and how she continues to spark conversations about identity, inclusivity, and play.

Whether you loved Barbie, loathed her, or rediscovered her through Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie movie, you’ll find this talk to be a fascinating journey through the life of the world’s most famous doll, and you’ll learn a lot about what she reveals about us. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A Barbie doll as photographed by Tracheotomy Bob / Creative Commons.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Torture in the Middle Ages,” with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, professor of medieval literature and author or editor of ten books on medieval violence.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/torture-in-the-middle-ages .]

When Pulp Fiction’s Marsellus Wallace vows to “get medieval” on someone we assume that they’re in for some serious pain. Torture—that most notorious aspect of medieval culture and society—more recently has been portrayed in popular culture in series like Game of Thrones and Vikings, through lurid scenes depicting torture and gruesome punishment as standard medieval practice. In many modern European cities one can find popular museums displaying such gruesome implements as the rack, the strappado, the gridiron, the wheel, and the iron maiden.

The dominant mythology suggests that the Middle Ages was a period during which sadistic torment was inflicted on citizens with impunity and without provocation. The truth, however, is a lot more complicated.
Join Professor Larissa “Kat” Tracy, who has extensively researched torture, punishment, and social justice in medieval society, for a talk challenging preconceived ideas that popular historians, films, and media have promoted about the prevalence of torture and judicial brutality in medieval society.

She’ll discuss medieval Europe’s actual use of torture—the instruments, the laws, the cultural norms, and the victims—and make clear that the act of punishment was actually a very different legal event. She’ll argue that the portrayals of medieval torture in literature represent satire, critique and dissent; they have didactic and political functions in opposing the status quo.

The books that Professor Tracy has written or edited include Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature; Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages; Medieval and Early Modern Murder; Flaying in the Premodern World, and most recently End Game: Exile and Execution in Medieval and Early Modern Society. When she gets medieval on you it means you are going to learn. The experience, however, won’t be painful at all. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Doors open at 5. Talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: Torture instruments on display at Prague Castle. Photo by Clayton Tang / Wikimedia Commons.