Three fun-yet-informative visual presentations about Building Castles, Failed Spelling and the History of Black Westerns. We hear from Nancy Bisaha, Professor of History and Director of Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Author Gabe Henry and Dr. Mia Mask, Professor of Film. Friday April 18th at 7:30pm at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY.
With fun music, libations and guaranteed good company: Doors at 7pm. Tickets: https://bit.ly/nnhv-apr18
So You Wanna Build a Castle? by Nancy Bisaha
If you’ve ever built a castle out of sand, snow, or Legos, you understand the fascination these structures hold for us— well into adulthood. You may think you know a lot about castles, but the truth will surprise you. Unlike ancient or modern fortresses or palaces, castles are truly medieval in origin and function. For a few centuries they changed the nature of warfare and society, giving the feudal nobility a huge advantage over the other classes and reason to beat the heck out of each other. Everyone, it seems, wanted a castle, if not several of them. This talk will explain what made castles so special, how fast you could throw one up, their instrumental role in the Norman Conquest and Crusades, and why they stopped being built almost overnight.
Nancy Bisaha is Professor of History and Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Vassar College. She received her BA from Rutgers College in 1990 and her PhD from Cornell University in 1997, where she worked under the direction of John Najemy. In 2004 Bisaha published Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (UPenn Press), which examines the ways in which humanists created an intellectual discourse depicting the Ottoman Turks as a cultural and religious other. In 2013 she published a translation of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s De Europa in collaboration with Robert Brown. Bisaha’s third book, From Christians to Europeans: Pope Pius II and the Concept of the Modern Western Identity, was published by Routledge Press in 2023. In addition to teaching survey courses on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Bisaha teaches such courses as “The Dark Ages c. 400-900,” “The Crusades,” “Machiavelli and his Contemporaries,” and “Constantinople/Istanbul:1453.”
Enough is ENUF! A (Brief) History of the Simplified Spelling Movement by Gabe Henry
Why does the G in George sound different from the G in gorge? Why does C begin both case and cease? And why is it funny when a philologist faints, but not polight to laf about it? Gabe Henry explores the quirky history of the Simplified Spelling Movement, which tried for centuries to streamline our spelling by turning through into thru, laugh into laf, and enough into enuf (tu naim a few). Gabe also attempts, without shame, to sell you his new book Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell. It will be available for purchase at our show.
Gabe Henry is the author of three books including the poetry anthology Eating Salad Drunk (Vulture’s Best Comedy Books of 2022), a humor collaboration with Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Odenkirk, Margaret Cho, Mike Birbiglia, Janeane Garofalo, Roy Wood Jr., and other titans of comedy. He has spent more than a decade exploring the strange and forgotten history of simplified spelling, which, by his own admission, has only made him a worse speller. He lives in New York.
Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western by Mia Mask
The Western is easily the most impactful American Film Genre, the reinterpretation of history into cinematic mythology. Black Westerns like Buck and the Preacher, Sidney Poitier’s Directorial Debut, set the stage for modern-day westploitation films like Django Unchained. Professor and author Mia Mask covers the significance of African American Westerns, the political importance they brought to cinema, and their continued impact on today’s movies. Her book Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western will be available for purchase at our show!
Mia Mask is the Mary Riepma Ross Professor of Film at Vassar College. She received her PhD from New York University. At Vassar, she teaches African American cinema, documentary history, African national cinemas, and genre courses. She is the author of Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film. Mask edited the anthology Contemporary Black American Cinema and published the jointly edited collection, Poitier Revisited: Reconsidering a Black Icon in the Obama Age. Her cultural commentary has been featured on National Public Radio programs “Tell Me More,” “Marketplace” and “Morning Edition,” and in documentaries for the Smithsonian Channel, the Criterion Channel and CNN’s The Movies.
Three fun-yet-informative visual presentations about Howler Monkey Testicles & the Bee Gees, Breastfeeding Through the Ages and Pythagoras Meets Pink Panther! We hear from Dr. Ramesh Laungani, Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Marist College, Julie Kling, a humor, health, and parenting writer and Yvonne Caruthers, a 35 year career cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in Washington, D.C. Friday February 21st at 7:30pm at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY.
With fun music, libations and guaranteed good company: Doors at 7pm. Tickets: bit.ly/nnhv-feb21
THE SPEAKERS
Yvonne Caruthers Science and Music: from Pythagoras to the Pink Panther
You see a flash of lightning and immediately start to count: one thousand one, one thousand two….based on a snippet of science you learned as a wee child. Science underpins everything we love about music, from the instruments we play to our favorite soundtracks. Yvonne Caruthers plays her cello to blend scientific principles with musical excerpts…as well as a pop quiz!
Before Yvonne Caruthers moved to Beacon in 2021, she had a 35 year career as a cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in Washington, D.C. In addition to made-for-TV specials, and foreign tours, in the early ‘90’s, the NSO began a series of state residencies, and it was then that Ms. Caruthers realized a need for programs connecting music to the standard school curriculum. Tonight she presents a short version of “Science and Music,” borne out of those experiences.She began studying the violin at 8 in her local public school, switched to the cello at 9 and never looked back. She has three adult children and three grandchildren.
Julie Kling It’s Udderly Fascinating! A Look at (Mostly Human) Breastfeeding Through the Ages
Raise your glass/bottle and prepare for a milk-drenched romp through the wild history of nursing! Did you know the Milky Way got its name from the Greek myth of Hera accidentally spraying a whole bunch of breast milk across the sky while trying (and failing) to nurse baby Hercules? Or that medieval aristocrats hired wet nurses so they could get back to partying and making more heirs? From Victorian-era doctors warning that “overindulgent” breastfeeding could spoil a child’s character to modern debates over formula, public nursing, and breast pump technology, we’ll explore how feeding babies has always been both essential and (for some reason) controversial.
Julie Kling is a humor, health, and parenting writer based in a New York suburb that is not as cool as Beacon. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Scary Mommy, and on-stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade. Sign up for her free and sporadic newsletter Mom Rage(r): Turning Your Mom Rage Into Raging Fun! @ juliekling.com
Dr. Ramesh Laungani Howler Monkey Testicles: Should Barry Gibb have Sung the Theme Song to Shaft?
What do howler monkey testicles, Barry Gibb’s falsetto, and the “Shaft” theme song have in common? More than you think. From Barry Gibb’s high notes to Shaft’s swagger, this talk unravels the wild connections between one of nature’s loudest voices and well… their packages, revealing one nature’s quirkiest trade-offs. Come for the Bee Gees and Shaft and learn a little biology along the way.
Dr. Ramesh Laungani is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Marist College. Before Marist, Ramesh was a professor of Biology for +10 years at Doane University in Nebraska. Dr. Laungani’s background is in plant ecology and climate change and has given many Nerd Nite talks back in Lincoln, NE and even a few in Brooklyn before moving up to the Hudson Valley. He also used to co-host a podcast about climate change called Warm Regards with Dr. Jacquelyn Gill from the University of Maine.
Friday January 10th at 7:30pm at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY! Three fun-yet-informative visual presentations about our music pathology, Man vs. Machine and Rabbit holes. We hear from Dr. Táhirih Motazedian, Associate Professor of Music Theory at Vassar College, Kevin Maher, Host of Kevin Geeks Out, a long-running variety show, and Emily Menez, Slackjaw Editor and Writer for CBS, Funny or Die, McSweeney’s and The New Yorker.
With fun music, libations and guaranteed good company: Doors at 7pm. Tickets: bit.ly/nnhv-j
THE SPEAKERS
Táhirih Motazedian Your Generation’s Music is The Worst: The NeverEnding Story of Music Pathology
Táhirih Motazedian is an Associate Professor of Music at Vassar College. Her book, Key Constellations: Interpreting Tonality in Film (University of California Press, 2023) explores how key and pitch relationships in film soundtracks tell a story. Before her career in music theory, Táhirih was a planetary scientist at NASA.
Kevin Maher Now is the Winter of our Cheap Content: Creating Art in the Time of A.I.
Kevin is a writer, filmmaker, comedian and producer who has worked at over 100 jobs: creating everything from award-winning poetry and guided meditations to kids’ TV shows, theme park rides and fast-food commercials. He’s the host of Kevin Geeks Out, a long-running variety show/ spiritual sibling to Nerd Nite. www.LoveKevin.com
Emily Menez Rabbit Holes!
Emily Menez has written for The New Yorker, CBS, Funny or Die, Nike, and McSweeney’s, amongst others. Her original plays and sketch shows have been performed throughout NYC, including “Slackjaw: LIVE” and “Screen to Sketch Comedy,” which both ran at Caveat.
Join us for a screening of the 1997 Jodie Foster film CONTACT. Based on Carl Sagan’s 1987 book, we speak with Reverend Amanda Wagner and Professor Clara Sousa-Silva, a quantum astrochemist and molecular astrophysicist and then go on Robert Zemeckis’ epic journey of science & faith (with popcorn & beer). Tickets here.
Nerd Nite Hudson Valley premieres Friday November 15th at 7:30pm at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY! Three fun-yet-informative visual presentations about our modern grammar, hijacking airplanes and amphibian migrations. With fun music, libations and guaranteed good company: Doors at 7pm. Tickets here!
THE SPEAKERS Caroline Eisner For All Intensive Purposes, I Could Care Less…English Grammar: When It’s So Bad, It’s Good
Tables are for eating customers only. Pinned to the wall, Rudy read the note. And the note said that no grammar is incorrect. Getting academic, the Rhetorical Triangle, along with grammatical choices, syntactic flexibility, and rhetorical effects, will be discussed.
Brendan Koerner Havana Here We Come: An Introduction to the Golden Age of Hijacking
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, airplane hijackings were astonishingly routine in the United States. Once a week or more, some desperate soul armed with a revolver, stick of dynamite, or jar of acid would commandeer a commercial jet and turn their fellow passengers into hostages. We’ll explore the skyjackers’ motives and techniques, the airlines’ bewildering decision to accept regular hijackings as a mere cost of doing business, and the reasons why this bizarre criminal epidemic finally came to an end.
Nadia Azizi & Marjorie Lewit Real Life Frogger
An “indicator species,” frogs are going extinct at an alarming rate. Here’s what you can do to help.
