Patricia Lawrence (University of Colorado)

Patricia Lawrence
Senior Lecturer
University of Colorado
Department of Anthropology
Boulder, CO  80309-0233   USA

phone: 303-543-0097
fax:   303-492-1871
email: patricia.lawrence@colorado.edu

Description of work:
Research Interests:  Cultural Anthropology; South Asia and Sri Lanka; 
Ethnicity and Identity; Religion and Ritual; Human Rights; Terror 
Warfare; Peacebuilding.

My activities currently include completing a book manuscript based on 
my field research in Sri Lanka's eastern war zone; teaching cultural 
anthropology classes on the intersection of human rights and anthropology; 
the ethnography of South Asia and Tamil culture.  In Sri Lanka, 
I am teaching an on-going series of workshops at the 
children's peace garden in Batticaloa and working as a consultant for 
several NGO's.  I am also completing a book manuscript based on my 
field research in the eastern war zone.

Publications:

1997a.  "The Changing Amman: Notes on the Injury of War in Eastern 
Sri Lanka," in South Asia: Journal of the South Asian Studies 
Association, Special Issue, Vol XX.

1997b. "Grief on the Body: the Work of Oracles in Eastern Sri Lanka" 
in Collective Identities, Michael Roberts, ed., Delhi: Navrang Press.

1998.  "The Changing Amman:  Notes on the Injury of War in Eastern 
Sri Lanka,"  in
Conflict and Community in Contemporary Sri Lanka, Studies in 
Contemporary South Asia No. 3, Sage Publications.

2000.  "Violence, Suffering, Amman: The Work of Oracles in Sri 
Lanka's Eastern War Zone" in Violence and Subjectivity, Veena Das, 
Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, and Pamela Reynolds, eds., 
Berkeley: University of California Press.

"Kali in a Context of Terror: Tasks of a Goddess in Sri Lanka's Civil 
War" in Encountering Kali: In the Center, at the Margins, in the 
West, Jeffrey Kripal and Rachael Fell McDermott, eds., Berkeley: 
University of California Press  (in press -- 2002).

"Activists and Oracles:  Responses to Violence Against Women in Sri 
Lanka's War Zone." in Human Rights Review Vol 3:2 (in press).

Films:

Anthropological consultant for a BBC-TV documentary film, Fire of 
Kali, based on ethnographic field research in Sri Lanka's eastern war 
zone.  Ray Fitzwalter Associates production, to be broadcast in the 
United Kingdom in December 1997.

Anthropological consultant for a National Geographic and BBC-TV co-production,
Trial by Fire.  Telecast nationally December 1, 1996, on "National 
Geographic Explorer" program, Turner Broadcasting System (TBS).