Profs and Pints Online presents: “Meet the Real Indiana Jones,” with Justin M. Jacobs, associate professor of history at American University and author of Indiana Jones in History: From Pompeii to the Moon.

Grab your hat and yell “Start the plane!” It's time for a scholarly adventure around the world with Justin Jacobs, an expert on the history of archeology who teaches a course dealing with the popular Indiana Jones film franchise and also is the author of The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures.

Professor Jacobs will discuss the relationship between the Indiana Jones films and famous explorers and archaeologists throughout history, pointing out gaps between film and fact too wide to leap. He'll also ask whether Jones and the real-life artifact hunters that preceded him really were the good guys, or instead were motivated by ugly racist and cultural stereotypes.

He will look at historical conditions that gave rise to the first practitioners of scientific archaeology and the lives and careers of some of the most famous explorers and archaeologists over the past 250 years. In uttering his signature phrase—“That belongs in a museum!”—Indiana Jones sought to distinguish himself from an unprincipled tomb raider, but his real-life predecessors espoused similar views in removing untold treasures from nations around the world that would happily have them back.  You’ll learn about the ideologies used to justify the removal of antiquities from sites in the Middle East and China to museums in the West, the political leaders who made the task possible, and how growing resistance from the nations that give birth to such objects eventually put an end to such Western expeditions.

We’ll also look at what the Indiana Jones films got wrong and right factually, and how well George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg did their homework.

You won't leave with any Arks or idols, but you will walk out with a much better understanding of archaeology and how treasures found their way to our local museums.

Profs & Pints Online: Meet the Real Indiana Jones