Dennis B. McGilvray (University of Colorado)

Dennis B. McGilvray
Professor of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology, 233 UCB
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO  80309-0233   USA

phones: 303-492-7198
fax:    303-492-1871
email:  dennis.mcgilvray@colorado.edu
URL:    http://spot.colorado.edu/~mcgilvra/Dennis_McGilvray/Home.html

Description of work:

I am a cultural anthropologist specializing in the study of Tamil and 
Muslim minority communities in Sri Lanka, as well as their links to south 
India (Tamilnadu and Kerala). My ethnographic fieldwork in the Ampara and 
Batticaloa Districts of Sri Lanka has focused on topics of Hindu caste 
organization, matrilineal kinship, matrilocal marriage and dowry, popular 
Hinduism and Islam (including Sufism), Eurasian (Burgher) identity, and 
ethnic violence and conflict.  I have also studied the reconstruction of 
Tamil, Burgher, and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka destroyed in the 2004 
Indian Ocean tsunami.   

Books:

Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions (co-edited 
with Michele R. Gamburd), Routledge 2010. 

Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri 
Lanka.  Duke University Press 2008.   

Muslim Perspectives on the Sri Lankan Conflict (co-authored with Mirak 
Raheem). Washington DC: East-West Center 2007.

Symbolic Heat: Gender, Health, and Worship among the Tamils of South India 
and Sri Lanka. Ahmedabad: Mapin 2003.

Caste Ideology and Interaction, (edited). Cambridge University Press 1982. 

Selected articles and chapters:

"Dreaming of Dowry: Post-tsunami Housing Strategies in Eastern Sri Lanka." 
(co-authored with Patricia Lawrence) in McGilvray and Gamburd, eds. 
Tsunami Recovery in  Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions.  Routledge 
2010.

"Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka: An Anthropologist Confronts the Real 
World." India Review 5: 372-93. (2006).

"Jailani: A Sufi Shrine in Sri Lanka."  in Imtiaz Ahmad and Helmut 
Reifeld, eds. Lived Islam in South Asia. Delhi: Social Science Press / 
Oxford & New York: Berghahn, 273-89. (2004).

"Arabs, Moors, and Muslims: Sri Lankan Muslim Ethnicity in Regional 
Perspective." Contributions to Indian Sociology 32: 433-83. (1998).

"Households in Akkaraipattu: Dowry and Domestic Organization among the 
Matrilineal Tamils and Moors of Sri Lanka." in John Gray and David Mearns, 
eds. Society from the Inside Out: Anthropological Perspectives on the 
South Asian Household.  New Delhi: Sage, 192-235. (1989).

"The Stirling Award Essay: Sex, Repression, and Sanskritization in Sri 
Lanka?"  Ethos 16: 99-127. (1988).

"Paraiyar Drummers of Sri Lanka: Consensus and Constraint in an 
Untouchable Caste." American Ethnologist 10: 97-115. (1983).

"Dutch Burghers and Portuguese Mechanics: Eurasian Ethnicity in Sri 
Lanka." Comparative Studies in Society and History 24: 235-63. (1982). 

"Sexual Power and Fertility in Sri Lanka: Batticaloa Tamils and Moors." in 
Carol P. MacCormack, ed. Ethnography of Fertility and Birth.  London: 
Academic Press, 25-73. (1982).  2nd edition Waveland Press, 15-63. (1994).