Prague College

Time: 7 pm on Wednesday, March 30

Language: English

Drawing on the experience of two Sri Lankan sisters who have lived in Prague and on the images from classical Sri Lankan films, this lecture looks at the different ways in which Sri Lankan women deal with romance, sexuality, and independence.

The family is extremely powerful in Sri Lanka, and most young women on the island are willing to let their parents find their partners. This tradition is breaking down only in the more cosmopolitan environment of Colombo, among the Tamil Tiger rebels, and among women who work in the international garment factories producing goods for famous Western brands like Nike and Banana Republic. Gayathri Khemadasa, the Sri Lankan classical pianist and co-founder of "Artists for Sri Lanka," will be present to answer questions after the lecture.

Lecturer:

Jeff Hush was a Shakespeare scholar before moving in 1994 to Prague, where he now works as an independent filmmaker. In the US, he taught literature and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago. Before that, Hush studied writing under V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel Prize winner. In 2005 Jeff Hush and Gayathri Khemadasa founded "Artists for Sri Lanka" to raise money for rebuilding in Sri Lanka and to promote racial harmony in Europe. Hush spent the summer of 2003 shooting his current film, "Buddha’s Tooth," a feature documentary, all around Sri Lanka. He is returning to Sri Lanka in April to shoot his next documentary, "After the Waves" ( www.artistsforsrilanka.org ).

Time: 7 pm on Wednesday, March 16

Language: English

Buddhism has an international reputation as a religion of peace. The situation in Sri Lanka over the past 50 years, however, has been very different.

Leading Sri Lankan monks, and their political supporters, have promoted "Buddhism" and the "Sinhala language" as the central identifying features of what it means to be "Sri Lankan." This has benefited the Sinhalese majority in the country (about 70% of the people), but it has inflamed feelings of nationalism and led to the exclusion of other groups there, eventually culminating in the anti-Tamil riots of 1983, which started 20 years of civil war. But this face of Buddhism, its institutional side, has another, more positive face.

Currently, some progressive human rights activists in Sri Lanka, like Sunila Abeysekera, draw inspiration from the life of the Buddha to spread a very different message, one that totally disavows nationalism and urges personal responsibility.