Nimanthi Rajasingham

Associate Professor of English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Director of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

Department/Office Information

English and Creative Writing, Women's Studies

414 Lathrop Hall

T 4:00pm - 5:00pm (414 Lathrop Hall)
W 3:00pm - 5:00pm (414 Lathrop Hall)

Contact

nrajasingham@colgate.edu (315) 228-6957

Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham's book, Assembling Ethnicities in Neoliberal Times: Ethnographic Fictions and Sri Lanka's War, is an imprint of the series, Critical Insurgencies, published by Northwestern University Press. Her book explores the role that colonialism, contemporary forms of globalization, and nationalism play in the the production of ethnic identities and ethnic violence, as they are articulated in aesthetic content influenced by ethnographic modes and forms of inquiry. To this end, she studies popular rural festivals, female workers' theater, novels on ethnic war, theaters of trauma and violence, and protest art and literatures.

She has recently begun research on South Asian diasporas in South Africa, the UK, and the United States to explore their strategies of refusing segregation and racial domination in these countries, especially after the commencement of the War on Terror.

She completed her doctoral work at the English Department at Rutgers University (2013), and her Masters at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2002).

Watch an interview she did in South Africa about her research

Read an interview on her book

Globalization Studies, African Literature, South Asian Literature, South Asian Diasporas, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Postcolonial Literatures.

Book

Assembling Ethnicities in Neoliberal Times: Ethnographic Fictions and Sri Lanka's War (IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019; Colombo: Tambapanni Academic Press, 2022)

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Forthcoming, "Post/Apartheid Cartographies and the War on Terror: Black Consciousness and Political Arab Identities in the Writings of Ishtiyaq Shukri." Eds. Praseeda Gopinath and Laura Brueck, Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literature. NY, London and Delhi: Routledge 2024.

“‘Work is War’: Neoliberalism and the Biafran War in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy.” Research in African Literatures 48.4 (Winter 2017): 1-20.

“How Bodies Matter: Sri Lankan Working-Class Women’s Performances in a Time of War.” Contemporary South Asia 24.4 (2016): 374-386.

"The Factory is Like the Paddy-Field: Gam Udawa Performances, Ethnicity and Neoliberalism." South Asian Review 33.3 (January 2013): 275-293.

"Being Tamil in a Different Way: a Feminist Critique of the Tamil Nation." Co-author Radhika Coomaraswamy. Journal of the School of Languages and Literature, Jawaharlal Nehru University 8 (Autumn 2007): 71-96.

Edited and Introduced July ’83 and After. Special Issue of Nethra 6.1 & 2 (2003).
This was a 20^th anniversary special issue that commemorated the 1983 pogrom in Sri Lanka. In July 1983 thousands of ethnic Tamils were killed and their property destroyed. In its aftermath, ethnic separatist war began in Sri Lanka. This issue published new and seminal essays, and creative works on that traumatic event and its lasting repercussions.

Edited and Collaborative Work in Books

"Being Tamil in a Different Way: a Feminist Critique of the Tamil Nation." Co-author Radhika Coomaraswamy. Ed. R. Cheran, Pathways of Dissent: Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka. New York: SAGE, 2009. (Sinhala version published in 2007)

Constellations of Violence: Gender and Representation in South Asia. Co-editor Radhika Coomaraswamy. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2008. (Sinhala version published in 2011)

"The Politics of the Governed: Maternal Politics and Child Recruitment in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka." Co-editor Radhika Coomaraswamy, Constellations of Violence: Gender and Representation in South Asia. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2008: 121-148.

Feminist Engagements with Violence: Contingent Moments from Sri Lanka. Co-authors Lisa Kois, and Rizvina De Alwis. Colombo: ICES, 2007.

Her research and teaching focus on Postcolonial Studies, South Asian Studies, African Literatures, Globalization Theory, Marxism, Anglophone Literature, Performance Studies, and Women's and Gender studies.

Nimanthi Rajasingham