The Center for International Studies and the Religious Studies Department hosted international visiting scholar, Sthaneshvar Timalsina, February 26-March 16, 2001 .  Professor Timalsina is internationally recognized as a leading authority on the Sanskritic traditions of Yoga, Tantrra, and Hindu philosophy.  An Assistant Professor at Kathmandu’s distinguished Valmiki College at Mahendra Sanskrit University, Timalsina has worked in collaboration with some of the finest scholars of Indology from both Europe and American, including Professors David Gordon White, Neils Gutschow, Axel Michaels, Marry Slusser, and Bernard Kohlver.  Timalsina has already established himself as a prolific writer with over a dozen publications in Sanskrit, Nepali, and English, and several other works in progress, including a Sanskrit-Tantric Dictionary that is eagerly awaited by the international community.

During his three-week visit to Grinnell College, Professor Timalsina co-lectured with Jeffrey Lidke, Religious Studies, for two upper-level courses:  Yoga Traditions (REL-295.02) & Art, Architecture, and Music in their South Asian Contexts (REL 395.01). Second, Timalsina served as a co-advisor and cultural informant for students working on their research papers. 

PUBLIC LECTURES
“The Goddess Who is Half-God:  The Mystical Depths of South Asian Erotic Art” and
“Householder’s Fire, Fire’s Householder:  An Entry into the Vedic World.”

S & B INTERVIEW
Professor Timalsina was interviewed for the March 9, 2001 issue of the Scarlet and Black by staff writer, Michael Andersen '03. Click here to view the article.

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Professor Denise Brahimi has been Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université de Paris-VII since 1971. She taught in Algiers, Algeria from 1960-1971, and has lived and traveled extensively in Africa. She is a specialist on francophone writers, dramatists, and filmmakers, especially women. Her numerous books and articles cover a wide range of writers, especially from North Africa (interview with Tahar Ben Jelloun, articles on Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar, Kateb Yacine, Albert Memmi, Taos Amrouche, Mohammed Dib, Fatima Gallaire (visiting author at Grinnell in 2000), as well as authors and filmmakers of sub-Saharan Africa and Québec. She has also published a book on Nadine Gordimer Nadine Gordimer: la femme, la politique, le roman. In Appareillages, she presents ten comparative studies of literary texts written by men and women on similar topics. In Maghrébines, she compiled literary profiles of women of the Maghreb and a more recent book Les Femmes africaines dans la littérature follows a similar model with profiles of African women. Her critical approach often draws upon the organic link between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

She has edited critical works on North Africa, and written numerous prefaces and introductions to collections on Algerian and North African literature. She serves as film and theater critic for the influential journal Algérie Littérature / Action (Burling receives this publication), the main publishing site for francophone writers of Algeria, and is on the editorial board of many other prominent literary journals.

Her most recent books focus on French women filmmakers: Cinéastes françaises (Paris: Fus-Art, 1999) and African francophone cinema Cinémas d’Afrique francophone et du Maghreb (Paris: Nathan, 1997).

Professor Brahimi's short course, FRN 395.03, studied films by women from the Caribbean, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and immigrant populations in Paris. Films shown for her short course included:   

*Rue Cases-Nègres by Martinican Euzhan Palcy Une Porte sur le ciel by Farida Belyazid
*Miel et Cendres by Tunisian Nadia Farès Femmes d’Alger by Kamal Dehane
*Mémoires d’immigrés by Yamina Benguigui
*Femmes aux yeux ouverts by Togolese Anne-Laure Folly 
*subtitled in English

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Graham Pitts, writer and internationally recognized authority in community cultural development, joined the Theatre Department at Grinnell College as International Visiting Scholar. Mr. Pitts taught "Creating Community-Based Theatre," THE 495.01, senior seminar group, March 12-23, 2001. Graham Pitts has been a teacher of English as a Second Language, a bookseller, a manager of bookshops and an actor in over fifteen play and ten films. He has been a full-time playwright and writer since 1978, during which he has enjoyed many writings residencies and stage commissions in every State of Australia.

Internationally, Graham has visited South Africa at the invitation of the trade unions in that country in order to consult on "art and working life". As the result of an Asialink grant he has also resided in the Philippines while writing for the Educational Theatre Association of the Philippines (PETA ) in Manila.

PUBLIC LECTURE
"Horizons of Hope: Cultural Democracy in Multicultural Australia."

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