PhD student research interests
Tasneem Perry
I am a first year PhD student under the supervision of Anastasia Valassopolous and Robert Spencer.
The working title of my thesis is Contemporary Resident Sri Lankan Writing: Inherent Hybridity, Enforced Essentialism. The thesis will explore three texts by resident Sri Lankan writers Nihal de Silva, David Blacker and Vivimarie Vanderpoorten with a view to a deeper understanding of the innate and inescapable hybridity, co-dependence and plurality of the Sri Lankan people. Though the texts themselves centre around themes of ethnic conflict, violence, essentialist ideology and nationalist rethoric a close reading reveals the inherent inter-connectedness of the lives of the characters and the narratives. The theoretical framework on postcolonial studies that especially underline my current reading are the issues surrounding hybridity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, identity, passing and performativity.