Nerd Nite 36: Medicine Cabinets, Thomas Jefferson and Foreign Movie Posters
Yo Nerds!
Spring has sprung and the nerds are out in abundance! So revel in the fact that winter is finally a cold, bleak memory and head inside at Frankford Hall to celebrate the season of renewal with these three awesomely diverse talks:
Gigi Naglak: “Not Your History Teacher’s Thomas Jefferson”
Thomas Jefferson is known the world over as a polymath, founding father of the United States, brilliant statesman and scientist, and deep Enlightenment-era thinker whose ruminations on democracy shook up an entire world order. He was a complex man whose commitment to the “inalienable rights” of human equality was belied by the hundreds of slaves he owned in his lifetime. This talk is about none of that serious stuff.
Bio: Gigi Naglak is the new curator of museum education at the American Philosophical Society. When not investigating the 18th and 19th centuries with visitors from around the world, she is often dancing with fans and making dick jokes as one half of Chlamydia dell’Arte: A Sex-Ed Burlesque.
Deanna Day: “A Short Biography of the Medicine Cabinet”
Although the bathroom medicine cabinet is ubiquitous today in the American home, this architectural innovation has only existed for less than a century. In this talk, I will share the medicine cabinet’s strange biography, including how it has created gender conflicts, what it tells us about changing healthcare politics, and why it became a lightning rod for snooping neighbors and friends.
Bio: Deanna Day is a historian and writer living in Philadelphia. She is currently finishing her doctorate in the History & Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where she works in the areas of medical technology and women’s health. More of her work can be found at deannaday.net.
Ben Leach: “Poster Child: How Other Countries Created a New Spin on Classic Movie Poster Designs”
For generations, movie posters served as our first impressions of what might have become life-changing experiences, and many posters are considered works of art in their own right. However, when it came time to market these films to other countries, certain countries decided to take it upon themselves to create something different and so far removed from the original design to reflect their own culture and tastes in film. Without leaving Frankford Hall, Ben will take you to Thailand, Ghana, and Poland, where the art of movie posters is quite different than anything you ever saw at the Ritz or AMC. From the emphasis on horror in Thailand to the folk art nature of advertising in Ghana to the insanity of a modern art movement in Poland, you may find yourself demanding that theaters display their movie posters’ foreign counterparts!
Bio: Ben Leach is a New Jersey-based science and medical writer. However, he is also a collector of the eclectic and unusual, especially if it’s something that relates to his childhood from the 1980s and 1990s, and it’s a rare weekend when he hasn’t checked a flea market or yard sale. He has been a published author on collectibles since he was 19, with work appearing in a bunch of once well-received magazines that don’t exist anymore because PRINT IS DYING. Currently, he operates a website dedicated to antiques and collectibles with his family called The Collector Gene. Last year, he spent 20 minutes at Nerd Nite talking about Mr. T.
Plus: Music by Beta Test!
The particulars:
Wednesday, April 9th
Frankford Hall
1210 Frankford Ave.
Show starts at 7:30pm
$5 cover gets you admission and happy hour specials all evening
P.S.: Be sure to join us at Frankford Hall on Sunday, April 27th at noon as we team up with the Philadelphia Science Festival for our Nerd Nite Brunch: Body vs. Booze event!
Posted in 2014