Monday, September 17th

Cole’s Bar
8:30pm

Once again we are descending on Cole’s Bar to hear funny things and fascinating things from smart people while drinking together.

Speaking of be’s… here’s the nerdastic lecture lineup:

So A Queen Bee Walks Into a Sports Bar: Honeybee Colony Reproduction


–Jana Kinsman

The honeybee is a tiny creature with an endless amount fascinating facts surrounding its colonial structure, products, and communication. Jana will be talking about how honeybee colonies reproduce, along with some basic bee knowledge. If there’s time, she’ll also answer any bee questions anyone has!

Jana’s a beekeeper who tends 10 honeybee hives throughout Chicago on her bicycle. Insects are a lifelong interest of hers, but honeybees especially have captured her as an adult.

Ryan Gosling is a Real Boy. Or, Why Ryan Gosling: Hey girl, a cultural analysis.


–Kat Zwick

A subject-contextualized and group-analytic theory of the phenomenon surrounding Ryan Gosling, most notably the Hey Girl memes that have positioned Gosling as every woman’s (and man’s) most desirable boyfriend. Zwick will look at everything from Richard Dawkins to Melanie Klein to Charlya Hayden to Sigmund Freud to Huffington Post to Perez Hilton to New York City easter egg hunts to real-life heroics to feminists to Seinfeld – and she will reveal the secret behind the boy-man we all love to not know.

K. M. Zwick, MA is a psychotherapist, a gender theorist, and a lover of popular culture. In her spare time, she knits scarves, reads weighty clinical texts, and was recently published in Gaga Stigmata, a peer-reviewed web publication devoted to academic inquiry into the phenomenon that is Lady Gaga. She also has cats.

The Book of the Fair & ULC’s connection to the White City


–Anita Mechler

Take a trip back to the gay 1890s with Union League Club librarian and archivist Anita Mechler as she unearths rarely seen archives on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the “Book of the Fair,” a 20-volume set of books from their rare book collection. Learn about the mysterious and slightly scandalous donor of these volumes as well as the Club’s connection to some of the biggest names on the Chicago scene (at that time). Additional research made possible through collaborations with the Newberry Library, the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collections and Preservation Division, and the Ryerson & Burnham Library at the Art Institute.

San Antonio native and UIC Masters Graduate Anita Mechler is best known for her roles as “Glasses Wearing Librarian”, “Cyclist in a Skirt” and “Knee Sock Aficionado.” She loves romantic bike rides through the city and sushi dinner dates, but hates anyone who can’t execute the proper use of a semicolon.