Professor to speak at WSSU on issues among newly immigrant South Asian women
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Dr. Sandya Hewamanne, assistant professor of anthropology at Wake Forest
University, will speak on “Threading Meaningful Lives: Arranged Marriages, Home Businesses and
Identity Negotiations among Newly Immigrant South Asian Women” on Thursday, March 21, at 12:30
p.m. in Room 228 of the Hall-Patterson Building on the Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) campus.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is based on an article Hewamanne published last year
that investigated how women who have come to the United States as brides of South Asian
professionals use threading, a hair removal method, as a home business to negotiate the challenges
they face as newly immigrant women. It focuses on how these young women combine their expected
roles as wives and mothers in a new country with their own aspirations to win respect, find meaning to
their lives, and find their identity through threading.
Hewamanne, whose research interests include globalization, identity, cultural politics and feminism,
received her B.A. degree in sociology from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and her M.A. and Ph.D. in
anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining Wake Forest in 2008, she had been
an assistant professor of anthropology at Drake University, a research scholar at the American Institute
for Sri Lankan Studies and senior lecturer in the Department of sociology at the University of Colombo.
Hewamanne also has served as overseas director for the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and as
a social scientist consultant to the World Bank project on tertiary education.
In addition to her public lecture, Hewamanne will present a faculty workshop on gender and sexuality in
India. These programs are part of WSSU’s efforts to integrate Indian into the university’s curriculum and
are funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.