Samitha Senanayake

Madison, WI

Biography

I am Samitha Senanayake. I teach part time in the English Department at Madison College. I am from Sri Lanka, and I earned my BA in English language and literature at the University of Peradeniya. I recently completed my dissertation project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which focused on the ways that 20th Century Sri Lankan Anglophone literature is in conversation with secular and Buddhist thinking. During my time as a graduate student, I worked at the UW-Madison writing center and I grew to love providing writing and learning support to students. I’m interested in thinking about how contemplative pedagogy, grounded in the cultural roots of these practices, might inform teaching, tutoring, and classroom practice. I’m excited to join the SABA committee because I am looking for books for my two year old whose relationship to South Asia, as a second generation Sri Lankan-American, through the books she reads is a source of wonder and curiosity for me.