Nerd Nite Hudson Valley #12: Badass Women Warriors! Building & Breaking Dictators! Surveillance Capitalism! March 20th
It’s March Madness! Three fun-yet-informative visual presentations with music, prizes, refreshments and guaranteed good company.
Kicking off Women’s History Month, Professor of History and Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Vassar College Nancy Bisaha presents “Badass Women Warriors of the Middle Ages.”
When you think about the Middle Ages (as one often does!), you probably envision warfare and a lot of knights running around. But you may be surprised by how many historical and literary sources from the period feature dozens more cases than just Joan of Arc. We see women leading troops, supporting armies, and even fighting in battles and defending cities under siege. Was this just a myth or anomaly, or part of a broader trend that lends deeper insight into women’s history, military history, and medieval society? Find out as we explore some of these cases together!
Nancy Bisaha is a Professor of History and the Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Vassar College. She received her BA from Rutgers College and her PhD from Cornell University. Her published works include Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (UPenn Press, 2004); a translation of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s De Europa in collaboration with Robert Brown (CUAP, 2013); and From Christians to Europeans: Pope Pius II and the Concept of the Modern Western Identity (Routledge Press, 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,” “Medieval Science and Technology,” and “Machiavelli.” Among her current projects is a historical novel centered around the conquest of Constantinople. This is her second Nerd Nite talk, her previous talk being “How to Build a Castle.”
Next, we hear from Comedian and Writer Luke Strathmann who runs the communications team at Yale’s Department of Economics with “Surveillance Capitalism & Digital Secrets You Wish Your Family Didn’t Know About You.”
Tech companies track, profile, and monetize us, but sometimes the real risk and embarrassment comes not from Big Tech, but from the people who can see our digital behavior up close: our families who we share passwords with. In this talk, Luke explores what tech companies actually know about us, what our digital footprints accidentally reveal, and why the biggest threat to your privacy is coming from inside the house (e.g. the people you love who have access to your account history).
Luke is a comedian and writer and runs the communications team at Yale’s Department of Economics. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, and he hosts EconLOL, the world’s first, best, and only economics-themed comedy show. He’s performed comedy at Comedy Cellar, UCB, Littlefield Stand Up NY, Caveat at more. He’s previously worked for MIT, the United Nations, Omidyar Network, and AI Now Institute.
Finally, investigative journalist and author Cillian Dunne brings us “How a Dictator Is Built and Broken: My Time Living With Noriega’s Right-Hand Man.”
The United States has spent more than a century shaping who holds power in Latin America, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. This talk uses Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega as a case study to show how dictators are not born but carefully engineered through intelligence agencies, money, and foreign policy. Drawing on extensive research from his time in Panama, writing the book The Right Hand Man, author Cillian Dunne takes the audience behind the scenes of how the same system that builds strongmen eventually turns on them.
Cillian Dunne is an Irish-American author who writes about crime, intelligence, and political power, usually by going places he probably should not. He is the author of The Right Hand Man, based on hundreds of original documents once owned by Manuel Noriega and months of reporting inside the former dictator’s inner circle in Panama. His work has appeared in The Times (UK), The Boston Globe, The Sunday World, and The Irish Sun.
This show will sell out! Get your early bird tickets before Wednesday March 4th for $15. After that, $20 until sold out. ($20 at the door if available)
Friday March 20th at 7:30pm at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY.
Doors at 7pm. Be there and be square!
Friday April 17th, 2026 at Industrial Arts Brewing Co
Trace Dominguez joins us once again to give a talk on poisons before we see a very special movie!
Friday May 29th, 2026 at The Howland Cultural Center