Producing Religion, Gender and National Identities in Sri Lankan Elite Girls’ Schools: Histories, Myths, Resistances (Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality)

This book provides the first comparative analysis of how religious, gender and national identities have been constructed in Christian, Buddhist and Hindu girls’ schools in Sri Lanka in the context of colonial histories and postcolonial struggles. Attended by the children of the socio-political elite, the Sri Lanka’s girls’ schools in this study have a significant impact on the country’s political, cultural and religious life as their graduates carry the values they were taught beyond these institutions’ doors into society.Combining archival research with ethnographic fieldwork, Jessica Albrecht examines how narratives of the past - including the Aryan myth, the story of the Sinhala Buddhist role model Sister Sanghamitta and ideas of womanhood from the Saivite reform movement - continue to shape religious and national identities in these schools today.She integrates perspectives from religious, postcolonial and gender studies to show that these institutions play a dual role: while they