Africana Studies Associate Professor Receives NEH Grant to Complete Book

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced $35.63 million in support of 258 humanities projects from scholars across the nation through its first Spotlight on Humanities in Higher Education grant program — part of a new initiative called, “American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future.”
  
San Diego State University’s Sureshi Jayawardene, associate professor in Africana Studies was one of 19 recipients based in California. The Summer Stipend award is the first NEH grant for Jayawardene.

“This summer I will be working on completing two chapters in my book, ‘We are Ceylon Africans!: Africana Culture, Politics, and Identity in Sri Lanka,’ the first book-length mixed- method study about the contemporary epistemologies of Ceylon Africans — generations-long African-descended people in Sri Lanka. 

This book is the first by an Africana Studies scholar to examine the global circuits of racialization and militarism in relation to enslaved Africans in South Asia. 

Jayawardene will conduct archival research at the National Archives in Colombo, Sri Lanka in July and August. “I'm most looking forward to being in Sri Lanka and connecting with Ceylon Africans as I visit the archives,” Jayawardene said.