Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Taslima Nasrin visits Elizabethtown College

A panel discussion, poetry and essay readings, and a roundtable discussion are planned as a kickoff, next month, to Elizabethtown College’s Writers House inaugural season. Featured is a lecture by the College’s Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow Taslima Nasrin at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15. The lecture, held in the Leffler Chapel and Performance Center, is open to the public.

Nasrin was born in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in a tightly regimented Muslim conservative environment. She will tell how, as a young girl, she pushed the gender boundaries of society by attending medical school and becoming a writer and editor of literary magazines that questioned women’s oppression and tradition in her native country. When a fatwa—a legal pronouncement by an Islam religious law specialist—was issued against her, Nasrin was confined to her house and was forced to leave her job. Eventually, she escaped from her country and now lives in exile.

Nasrin’s lecture is sponsored by the Dean of Faculty and tied to the opening of the new Writers House, located in the former Hess family home between Cedar and Cherry streets in Elizabethtown. Writers House is a venue in which students and faculty can explore the scholarly pursuit of expression, presentation and performance; work on their writing; and explore creative fiction and nonfiction, poetry, drama and scholarly writing, as well as writing for films and documentaries, music, the visual arts, and both the printed and spoken word.

Elizabethtown College Writers House welcomes student and faculty writers, as well as scholars, performers and speakers. Writers House director is Jesse Waters, visiting assistant professor of English.

Additional events celebrating the kickoff include a panel discussion at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7, concerning the Intertexual and Interdisciplinary Natures of Math, Music and Art. The panel discussion, held in Writers House, features James Hughes, professor of mathematics and department chair of mathematical and computer sciences; Jim Haines, professor of music; and Milt Friedly, professor of art.

A roundtable discussion, sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty, takes place at 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13. Held at Writers House, the roundtable features Taslima Nasrin, discussing Equity and Equality for Women in the 21st Century.

And, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 14, Nasrin presents a poetry reading at the Writers House.

To wind up the week, Nasrin presents selected readings from autobiographical and essay work at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 16. The reading, held in Esbenshade Hall’s Gibble Auditorium, is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty.

Contact: Jesse Waters, 717-361-3762 or writershouse@etown.edu