SLIIT Faculty of Humanities and Sciences GUEST LECTURE ON : “The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka”
A guest lecture was delivered by Visiting Scholar, Prof. Christina P. Davis, Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Western Illinois University, USA on Wednesday June 26 at the Faculty from 11.30am to 12.30pm. She is a linguistic anthropologist focusing on linguistic and digital media practices, language policy, and multilingual education in Sri Lanka and India. She spoke on her first book, “The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka” (Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Language, Oxford University Press, 2020), which examines the tension between ethnic conflict and multilingual education policy in the linguistic and social practices of Sri Lankan minority youth. Prof. Davis also briefly spoke on her second book, “Language, Education, and Identity: Medium in South Asia” (New York: Routledge). Co-authored with Chaise LaDousa, it provides insight into language in education and its social, economic, and political significance in the lives of people in South Asia – Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It has two chapters on Sri Lanka – “Recognizing Diversity: ‘Multiethnic’ Sinhala- and Tamil-medium Schools in Sri Lanka” and “Muslims in Sri Lankan Language Politics: Tamil- and English-Medium Education.” She concluded the talk introducing the third book “Mother Tongue and English: The Politics of Language at Indian Universities” (Under contract, Cambridge University Press), which is being co-authored with Chaise LaDousa. The book incorporates interviews with students at universities in western and northern India to examine how “mother tongue” is imagined in relation to English. A lively discussion followed the well-received lecture. Dr. Harsha Wijesekera, Head, School of Education, hosted the visiting scholar.
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