On Saturday, February 10, come warm your heart and melt your brain with Nerd Nite as we celebrate St. Valentine’s Day the only way we can fathom: niche wisdom. We’ll have talks on the 2500 year old art of communicating like a badass, teach you how to master the craft of copyright, and give you a few relationship pointers from William “The Bard” Shakespeare. A night not to be missed! So grab your brain, pluck some flowers from your neighbor’s yard, and come ready for the best blind date you can imagine. Because it’s a date with KNOWLEDGE. We’ll see you at DC9. Doors open at 6:00 pm and show starts at 6:30pm.
Getting my BA in BS:
How I fell in LOVE with Rhetoric by Cat Aboudara
Cat was going to be a tiger trainer and was pursuing Natural Resources & Conservation Studies at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate when she signed up for a Rhetoric class on a lark. She was hooked at mapping out her first syllogism (which will be explained!). Rhetoric which is considered a dead art, began 2500 years ago as the study of the forms of communication and argument essential to public, political and legal life in Ancient Greece. No one really knows what it is anymore but learning it gives a person some impressive communication superpowers as well as taking them down some totally interesting rabbit holes which Cat will attest to in this ode to Rhetoric.
BIO: Cat Aboudara is the Assistant Director of Program Initiatives at the Franklin Institute, Cat oversees adult programs that posit learning through play. Before absconding to the Franklin, she worked on a pan-institutional and inter-agency Innovation team at the Smithsonian. She moonlights as the Nerd Nite DC Boss even though she has to trek down from Philly to do it!
Copyright and You:
A Primer So You (and Your Pet Monkey) Don’t Get Sued by Emma Raviv
SIck of living under a cloud of an impending lawsuit just because you’re tryna do you on the internet? Ugh, aren’t we all? Copyright is hard, and technology has made it harder. Luckily, Emma knows some things and is here to blow up some myths and tell some hard truths about the way the law works. Monkeys, Facebook disclaimers, and basketball video games will be covered, among other things. Please note that this talk doesn’t mean you and she have any kind of attorney-client relationship, which is a thing she has to say per other legal rules which she will not be covering in this talk (thank god — unlike copyright, those rules are boring).
Emma Raviv is a DC native and an Attorney-Advisor in the Ringer Honors Program at the United States Copyright Office. Before that, she worked at a big law firm in New York fighting some good copyright fights in court on behalf of clients in the fitness, advertising, gaming, and cruise industries. She went to Harvard Law (though is not blonde, legally), and spends her free time running, eating, and making her cats chase a laser pointer.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Shakespearean Dating:
by Grace Ann Roberts and Emma Poltrack
Romeo and Juliet are Shakespeare’s most iconic lovers….but should they be? Taking a whirlwind look at some of the playwright’s most famous couples, the Folger duo examines what ol’ Bill can teach us about relationships, which lovers put the “fun” in “dysfunctional,” and how to avoid some common problems in early modern dating.
After getting rejected from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Emma Poltrack moved on to plan b and received her doctorate in contemporary Shakespearean performance from the University of Warwick. She now spends her days providing administrative and event support in her capacity as the Folger’s Public Programs Administrative Assistant. In her spare time, she enjoys embroidering swear words and yelling about the Met’s new admission policy.
Grace Ann Roberts has a BA in Theatre and English Lit from the University of South Carolina and a certificate in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries from LAMDA. You can find her serving up the freshest talks, screenings, and lectures as the Humanities Program Assistant at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She also just joined the Little Academy DC team as Producing Director. Her hobbies include running and overspending on books.
