Wimal Dissanayake is one of the leading scholars of Asian cinema and Asian communication theory. He has also been awarded an honorary D.Litt. for his scholarly work. He has written a large number of books on cinema and cultural theory which have been published by Oxford, Cambridge, Duke, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois University Presses and Routledge Publishers and Penguin. His notable works include: ‘Ashes of Time’(2003), ‘Sholay, A Cultural Reading’(1992), ‘Self and Colonial Desire: Travel Writing of V.S. Naipal’ (1993), ‘Raj Kapoors Films: Harmony of Discourses’ (1988). He is the Founding Editor of the East-West Film Journal. He was the Director of the Cultural Studies Program jointly sponsored by the University of Hawai’i and the East-West Center. Dissanayake is also one of the leading poets in Sri Lanka who has published eight volumes of poetry in his mother tongue Sinhalese, and has won numerous awards for his poetry. In 2012 he was given the highest lifetime award granted by the Government of Sri Lanka. He is also the recipient of the Lifetime Award conferred by the Sri Lanka Foundation in Los Angeles. He also serves as an Editorial Advisor to a large number of prestigious international academic journals dealing with cinema, communication, and cultural theory, as well as the International Encyclopedia of Communication. He has been invited as the keynote speaker at conferences held in countries and territories such as Germany, Canada, United States, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Email: acm@hawaii.edu
Phone: (808) 956-7736
