About Intercollegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program

The ISLE Program takes an interdisciplinary, experiential approach to understanding the social, political, economic and environmental issues facing the diverse communities of Sri Lanka. The 16-credit semester is comprised of a two required core courses – one language course and a seminar course, which includes an independent research project – plus two electives. All courses are worth 4 Butler University credits.

REQUIRED COURSES

Sinhala I Language: Intensive language instruction in colloquial Sinhala, emphasizing functional use of the language in contexts that students can be expected to encounter in daily life.

Sri Lankan Studies Seminar & Independent Study Seminar: The Sri Lankan Studies Seminar is a collection of field-based lectures led by professors and scholars from the University of Peradeniya. Each lecture offers a glimpse into a different aspect of Sri Lankan culture and society, so as to provide students with a holistic understanding of the island and its people. This course includes short day trips and overnight visits to villages, NGOs and historical and religious sites throughout the island. The Sri Lankan Studies Seminar prepares students for the culminating Independent Study Project, which consists of four weeks of field research. Students submit a final research paper and present their work at a day-long symposium.

ELECTIVE COURSES

Not all electives may be offered in a given semester depending on enrollment.

Religion, Ritual and Everyday Life: This course, taught by a team of faculty and local scholars, provides insights into the religious life of various ethnic communities in Sri Lanka: Sinhala Buddhists, Tamil Hindus and Muslims. It will include an examination of different forms of worship at home and in religious shrines, healing rituals as well as rites of passage. The course also explores inter- and intra-religious tensions as well as common ritual practices that intersect religious boundaries.

Women, Gender, Culture and Nation: Various forces shape women’s options and life-experiences in Sri Lanka today. This course introduces women in both the cultural and material realms of Sri Lankan society in order to highlight the dialectic between the “real” (i.e., the actual material conditions) and the “imagined” (i.e., stereotypes and images) that shapes the gendered status-quo and women’s options. Students first explore the production and reproduction of women from a cultural perspective, then examine the materiality of women’s lives as determined by prevailing legal, economic and political structures – the attempt always being to tease out the concordances and discordances between the two in shaping Sri Lankan women’s lives.

Plants, Herbs and Traditional Medicine in Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka is a country with a rich heritage of connection to the natural environment and diverse medical traditions including Western medicine, Veddah and Ayurveda. This course provides an overview of this healthcare diversity by examining how the country’s medical traditions developed over time and their contemporary usage as health care sources in both formal and informal settings within a system of plural medicine. Students participate in a number of field visits, enabling them to get a firsthand look at the use of traditional medicine in Sri Lanka.

Biodiversity in Sri Lanka: The course addresses the importance of biodiversity and its relationships with sustainable development and poverty alleviation in a case study of Sri Lanka. Students gain a greater understanding of the problems associated with biodiversity conservation in a densely populated tropical country and society’s dependence on it for sustainable development. This course provides a foundation to inspire students to become informed decision-makers and contribute towards the conservation of the world’s biodiversity.

Modern Sri Lankan Politics: This course introduces the salient features of modern Sri Lanka politics, with special attention paid to state-building and crises in governance across post-colonial developing societies. Though Sri Lanka was regarded as a model democratic welfare state in the third world during the early years of independence, its image changed with the subsequent eruption of ethnic violence. The conclusion of the lengthy civil war in 2009 has opened up opportunities for Sri Lanka to embark on a new journey towards achieving sustainable peace and building a cohesive society. At the same time, a number of serious challenges have emerged internally and externally that need to be addressed carefully in the post-war political context.

Ethnicity and Social Identity in Sri Lanka: This course explores Sri Lankan society through three primary bases of personal and social identity –caste, social class and ethnicity. In particular it considers why ethnicity is more important than either caste or social class in shaping group processes, political dynamics and social conflict in contemporary Sri Lanka. In the post-war era, instead of promoting ethnic reconciliation, celebration of the war victory, militarization and economic development have been aggressively pursued by the state, disregarding the political demands from minority communities. In this course the upsurge in ethnicity and nationalism is viewed not as a uniquely Sri Lankan phenomenon, but a worldwide process in some ways contrary to the expected trajectory of globalization.

Ethnicity and Politics in Sri Lanka: This course provides an introduction to ethnicity and politics in Sri Lanka and explores why and how ethnicity has emerged as an important factor in shaping social processes, political dynamics and social conflict in contemporary Sri Lanka. Beginning with a conceptual discussion on ethnicity, identity politics, ethno—nationalism, and changing dynamics of ethnicity, discussion topics include the impact of ethnicity on electoral politics, conflict, democracy, governance, development and reconciliation. Students will be encouraged to reflect how ethnicity as well as religion has played a role in conflict, politics and development in the past and how they continue to be important in a variety of ways in Sri Lanka

Sinhala II Language: Sinhala II focuses on improving the four language skills (speaking, reading, writing and listening). More class time will be spent on practicing spoken Sinhala. Individual and pair activities, role plays and presentations will be used in class in order to continue building on the vocabulary and conversation structures learned in Sinhala I. Some activities will be conducted out of the class and in real life atmospheres.

Tamil I Language: Fundamentals of conversational and written Tamil for beginning students.