Ranjini Mendis

ATCL (Engl.), BA Hons (Ceylon), M.Ed. (Mass.), MA (Calgary)
Ranjini Mendis
Surrey Office: Fully Online

As a full-time faculty member in the English department since 1991, I have taught a variety of courses, including introductory university writing and literature; 14th to 18th century English literature; music and poetry of the renaissance; major authors; women writing/writing women; and postcolonial, diasporic, and cross-cultural world literature. 

The journal Postcolonial Text, the first born-digital open access journals in the field to come out of Canada, was co-founded by me with Professor John Willinsky, Director of the Public Knowledge Project. I served as its Managing/Associate Editor and Principal Contact for ten years.

Among external organizations I have served are the Canadian Assoc. for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (as President and conference convenor); the Assoc. for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (as International Chair and ACLALS 2007 Vancouver conference organizer); the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (in the board of directors, representing small associations); the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) restructuring cttee; and the Commonwealth Foundation’s writers' workshops at CHOGM People's Forums in Malta and Uganda, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize committee.

Various KPU committees I have participated in include The Cultural Diversity Cttee (CDEA) from its very beginning in the 1990s for ten years. I’ve also served as the Humanities Rep in the KFA, the Humanities PD Committee as Chair, and Chair of the English Department’s Library Committee. One of the fun events was providing light entertainment (piano music) at a KPU fund-raiser in days gone by, having been a piano teacher in a previous life.

Areas of Interest

  • Postcolonial Literature; Diaspora Studies
  • Open Access Publishing
  • Online teaching

Scholarly Work

  • BOOK:
  • Ashcroft, Bill, Ranjini Mendis, Julie McGonegal, Arun Mukherjee (Eds.) Literature for Our Times: Postcolonial Literature in the Twenty First Century. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2013.
  • ARTICLES, PRESENTATIONS, (Invited) BOOK REVIEWS, and EDITORIALS:
  • Mendis, Ranjini. Rev. of After Melancholia: A Reappraisal of Second-Generation Diasporic Subjectivity in the Work of Jhumpa Lahiri by Delphine Munos. South Asian Diaspora (Vol 9 No 2 Sept 2017). Routledge Online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2017.1280922
  • Paper presentation on Globalization and Violence at the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) conference, Galway, Ireland, August 25, 2016.
  • Mendis, Ranjini. Rev. of Terror and Reconciliation: Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature, 1983–2009 by Maryse Jayasuriya. ARIEL, Volume 46, Number 3, (2015).
  • Mendis, Ranjini. Editorial. Postcolonial Text, Vol 8 No 1 (2013).
  • Mendis, Ranjini and John Willinsky. Editorial. Postcolonial Text, Vol 4 No 2 (2008).
  • Willinsky, J. & Mendis, R. "Open access on a zero budget: a case study of Postcolonial Text." Information Research, 12 (3). 2007.
  • Mendis, Ranjini. Rev. of “W/here Are We Now”: At Home in Diaspora: South Asian Scholars and the West Ed. Jackie Assayag and Veronique Benei. Canadian Literature #186 (2005).
  • Mendis, Ranjini. “Welcome to Postcolonial Text.” Postcolonial Text, Vol 1 No 1 (2004).
  • Mendis, Ranjini. Rev. of Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, CHIMO Vol 41 (2000).
  • Mendis, Ranjini. Rev. of D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke, Ed. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. ARIEL, Vol 29, Number 4 (1998).