by Stephen Berkwitz
Stephen C. Berkwitz, Professor and Head of Religious Studies, published Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism: Alagiyavanna and the Portuguese in Sri Lanka (Oxford University Press, 2013). He began this research in 2005 while on a Fulbright Fellowship in Sri Lanka, and did subsequent research and writing with the help of a sabbatical in 2006, a summer faculty fellowship in Lisbon in 2008, and as a visiting researcher in Germany from 2011-2012. His book explores transformations in Sinhala Buddhist poetry through an examination of five works by Alagiyavanna Mukaveti (b. 1552), whose long career coincided with the development of Portuguese colonialism in Sri Lanka. His book uses poetry to uncover the historical experience and religious changes that accompanied some of the earliest encounters between Asian Buddhists and European colonizers.