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Profs & Pints: Summoning Fairies

Profs and Pints presents: Summoning Fairies, an exploration of the literature and folklore of the elusive fairy and her kin, with Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman, former English instructors at The Ohio State University and founders of the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

The fairies of legend are not the fairies we tend to think of today. They are not light-hearted, harmless, silly, or tiny. Before the Victorian era shrank them and Disney decked them in sparkling pastels, they inspired fear and respect, wonder and awe.

Folklore presents the fae as amoral, trickster creatures that exist in the liminal states between worlds. They are indifferent, powerful, and not to be trifled with. They are of the natural world and therefore largely unconcerned with mortal ways until they are not. These otherworldly creatures have captured imaginations in both oral tales and written literature for hundreds of years.

Come learn about the study of fairylore, a rich tradition that is, despite the perceived diminishing of fairy belief in our modern age, still relevant today. We'll explore the figure of the fairy across media, examining why such creatures continue to enchant us, what purposes their tales serve in society, and what they can tell us about ourselves. You'll learn about contemporary scholarship on fairies in Newfoundland, and the recently revived Fairy Investigation Society, a group dedicated to collecting new stories about fairy encounters.

So come away, o human child, and join us in the land of Faerie for an evening of magic, danger, and mischief. It will be a flight of fancy.