October 7, 2015. Doors open at 4pm, show starts at 7:30pm.

Frankford Hall
1210 Frankford Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125
$5 cover gets you admission plus happy hour specials all night

Archivists take over the popular bar-based monthly lecture series, Nerd Nite Philly.

Lisa Berry Drago [Chemical Heritage Foundation] will present “You’ve Got Some Gall: Early Modern Inks and Pigments”

So, you’re a monk in the fourteenth century, and you want to copy a few pages of your favorite hymnal. No problem! First, you catch a goat. Then you skin a goat. Then you find some gall nuts on an oak tree, and some good red wine… okay, you get the idea. Writing and book-making were highly specialized arts requiring patience and expertise. This Nerd Nite, you’ll learn about the process of making manuscripts, and even get to try your hand at writing with real iron-gall ink and feather quills.

Tara O’Brien [Historical Society of Pennsylvania] will discuss the history of cursive writing. Maybe we can get her take on the importance of teaching penmanship in Philly public schools?

And Matt Herbison [Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center] will talk about “She-Doctors and Shameless Non-Blushers: Women Physicians in the US”

Philly has always been a big medical school town, including the Female Medical College of PA, the first med school for women in the world, founded in 1850 by Quakers (naturally).  Women working outside their accepted sphere of home and family and getting elbows-deep into unwomanly medical situations was far from universally accepted – in fact, over 160 years later, the gender imbalance for doctors is still significant.  To do up Archives Month the way it deserves, we’ll get our own hands dirty with this turbulent history and uncover juicy original documents that reveal the struggles these women faced when they deigned to enter the men’s world of science and medicine

What is Nerd Nite?
Nerd Nite is a monthly lecture event that strives for an inebriated, salacious, yet deeply academic vibe. It’s often about science or technology, but by no means is it limited to such topics. And it’s definitely entertaining. Our unofficial tag line is “It’s like the Discovery Channel – with beer!” There are Nerd Nites around the world, Philadelphia is just one of them. Take a gander at http://philadelphia.nerdnite.com/welcome/ for more info.