Tue. 18^th May, 2021
16:15-17:45 Hrs (CEST/UTC+2h)

Online
━ ZOOM Link
Meeting ID: 832 6480 4133
Passcode: 737844

Abteilungskolloquium (SoSe 2021) | Colloquium (Summer Semester 2021)

▍ Religious Girls' Education in Colonial Sri Lanka: Creating Motherhood and Womanhood

Jessica Albrecht
(PhD Candidate, Dept. of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology, Heidelberg University)

Religious Girls' education in Sri Lanka can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when Buddhist and Hindu reform groups established Buddhist / Hindu Girls’ Schools to counter the influence of the Christian missionary schools. One such school is the Musaeus College in Colombo, which still exists today. The presentation will engage with this school as a case study for the gendered and religious colonial education of Sinhalese girls. The school’s Principal was Marie Musaeus Higgins, a Theosophist who came from the United States to help in this endeavor. She constituted herself as the 'white mother‘ of her students - an image which was used then and now by the school and the Sinhalese actors themselves.

This presentation will highlight the global entanglement of early feminism, especially through its conceptualization of social motherhood, through the lenses of post-colonialism and gender studies.