Profile:
M. Neelika Jayawardane
An assistant professor at SUNY-Oswego, Neelika Jayawardane is a scholar of transnational and postcolonial literature. Jayawardane grew up in Zambia, was born in Sri Lanka to a Sri Lankan-Portuguese family, and earned her Ph.D. at the University of Denver. She also holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Iowa State University. She focuses on Post-Apartheid Literature, Transnational memoirs and diasporic writers, and the new writer-critics from Southern Africa and Southeast Asia. Jayawardane attempts to explore the contact-zone between ancient and modern, mythology and “history,” the rational and the dream-state through close, comparative studies of language.