විලාස්නී තම්පෝ-හුටින් වෙලුම් දෙකකින් සමන්විත වූ මේ කෘති එකතුවේ පළමු වෙලුමෙන් අවධාරණය කරණුයේ 1896 සිට 1928 දක්වා වූ කාලය තුළ දිගහැරුන ලංකාවේ සිනමා වංශකතාවේ මුල් යුගයේ එංගලන්තයෙන් හා ඉන්දියාවෙන් ලැබුන දායකත්වය පිළිබඳවය. එහිදී විශේෂයෙන් අවදාරණය වන්නේ මේ දෙරට ශ්රී ලංකාවේ සිනාමාවේදයට අවැසි වූ යටිතල පහසුකම් සැපයූ ආකාරය හා මෙරට සිනමාවට අණුප්රාණය ලබාදුන් ආකාරය පිළිබඳවය. දෙවන […]
By Nira Wickramasinghe Everyday life in the Crown colony of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was characterized by a direct encounter of people with modernity through the consumption and use of foreign machines – in particular, the Singer sewing machine, but also the gramophone, tramway, bicycle and varieties of industrial equipment. The ‘metallic modern’ of the 19th […]
By Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri The Adaptable Peasant investigates the structural changes in western Sri Lanka’s agrarian society under the administration of the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) in the mid-eighteenth century. Drawing from an array of Dutch language sources, it attempts to reconstruct the encounter between the Company and two major historical actors in […]
By Alicia Schrikker This book looks at the history of Dutch and British colonial intervention in Sri Lanka between 1780-1815. It unravels colonialism’s layers as they had evolved during different phases of colonial transition in Sri Lanka and shows how traditional historical periodization has made colonial continuities and legacies invisible. While from the perspective of […]
TAP’s Thirangie Jayatilake met up with Nihal Perera in Colombo on 15 July 2020 to talk about his book Decolonizing Ceylon (OUP, 1999), especially its upcoming Sinhala translation and his ventures in the study of social space. As a young architecture student, a core question that piqued Professor Nihal Perera’s curiosity was, “why do Sri […]
This book is a detailed study of the architecture of Valentine Gunasekara (1931-2017). It provides an innovative lens to understand the formation of a Ceylonese middle-class, which was inspired by the post-independence desire for modernity. Their experiments, values and dynamic social history are the framework for this research. Although neglected by his peers and marginalized […]
මෙම කෘතියේ ප්රධාන තර්කය වන්නේ වර්තමාන ශ්රී ලංකාවේ සිංහල ස්ත්රියගේ ජීවිතය හැඩ ගැස්වීමේ ලා ඉමහත් බලපැමක් ඇති කරන “සිංහල බෞද්ධ” ස්ත්රිය යන අනන්යතාව ජනප්රිය විශ්වාසයට අනුව අවුරුදු 2500 ක් පැරණි සංස්කෘතියක ප්රතිපලයක් නොව, ලංකාවේ 19 වන සියවසෙහි අග භාගයේ සහ විසිවෙනි සියවසෙහි මුල භාගයේ බ්රිතාන්ය යටත් විජිතකරණය සහ එයට එරෙහිව නැගුනු ජාතිකවාදයෙහි ප්රතිපලයක් වූ ස්ත්රී […]
Decolonial Options and Artistic/AestheSic Entanglements:[i] An Interview with Walter Mignolo (This interview was initially published in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014, pp. 196-212. It is re-published in ‘TAP Interviews’ under a Creative Commons agreement. In it, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto […]
This book argues that engineering is not just an object of science, an artifact or a technical programme, but also a symbol, a worksite, a conceptual space, a community or even a myth. It is within this broader understanding that three very diverse engineering sites in Sri Lanka are used as case studies to discuss […]
(This interview by Asif Bin Ali was initially published in the Dhaka, Bangladesh-based, The Daily Observer on Wednesday, 27 March, 2019. It took as its point of departure the publication of the book, Against the Nation: Thinking Like South Asians by Sasanka Perera, Dev Nath Pathak and Ravi Kumar (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), and discusses intellectual […]