Garrett Field

Garrett Field’s scholarship explores the history of song and poetry in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, with particular attention to Sinhala- and Dhivehi-language texts. Dr. Field has also published on how musicians improvise in South Indian classical music. He has received support for his research from the Fulbright-Hays Award, Ohio University’s Baker Fund Award, and two Sinhala Language Instruction Grants from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies.

Field is the author of Modernizing Composition: Sinhala Song, Poetry, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka (University of California Press, 2017). It was published in the series, "South Asia Across the Disciplines" He has published research articles in the following peer-reviewed journals: Analytical Approaches to World Music; Anthropological Linguistics; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Ethnomusicology Review; Ethnomusicology Translations; The Journal of Asian Studies; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society; The Maldives National Journal of Research; Modern Asian Studies; Sagar: A South Asia Research Journal; South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies; The South Asianist; and The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities.

Field has delivered invited lectures at the Department of Sinhala, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka (2012); Centre for Contemporary Indian Studies, University of Colombo (2012); University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka (2012); University of Virginia (2016); U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka (2017); Centre for Contemporary Indian Studies, University of Colombo (2017); The University of Chicago (2019); The Dhivehi Language Academy, Malé, Maldives (online, 2020); The Annual Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan University (2023); American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (online, 2023); UCLA Center for India and South Asia (2025); Department of Sinhala, University of Colombo (2025); University of Peradeniya (2025);  University of Kelaniya (2025); and Rajarata University (2025). In 2023, he delivered a keynote address at The International Conference on Intellectual Advancement held at the Islamic University of Maldives. In addition to this research, Field also performs South Indian classical music. His teachers were B. Balasubrahmaniyan, David Nelson, and Kalpana Venkat.

Book

• 2017. Modernizing Composition: Sinhala Song, Poetry, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka.(opens in a new window) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

• Forthcoming. “Poetry is a Flavorful Ball: Sinhala Poetic Prescriptions in Munidasa Cumaratunga’s Kavi Śikṣāva (Poetics), 1939.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.
• 2026. “Social Reform without Colonial Critique: Hussain Salahuddeen’s Dhivehi Novel Rivaayathu Nu’maan va Maryam, 1934.” The Maldives National Journal of Research 13(2): 269-286.
• 2026. “Domesticating the Prophetic Biography: Dhivehi Translation, Recitation, and Praise Song in the Maldives, 1937–1973." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
• 2026. “Daydreams at Dawn: Hussain Salahuddeen’s Dhivehi Novel Numaan and Maryam.” In Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean ed. Nile Green. University of Texas Press.
• 2025. “A Provincial Travelogue of the Indian Ocean: Chronicling a Royal Sea Voyage in Dhivehi Poetry from the Maldives, 1804." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1-18. PDF
• 2024. "Rhythmic and Poetic Qualities in Sinhala Speech" by Mahagama Sekera. Translated with an introduction by Garrett Field and Ravinda Mahagamasekera. Ethnomusicology Translations 16: 1-33. PDF
• 2024. “Musical Improvisation and Elegant Writing: Ālāpana in South Indian Karnatak Music Performed by U. Srinivas.” Analytical Approaches to World Music 11(2): 1-33. | PDF
• 2022. “Poetry for Linguistic Description: The Maldives Inside and Outside the Arabic Cosmopolis in 1890.” Modern Asian Studies 1-32. | PDF
• 2021. "Scrambling Syllables in Sung Poetry of the Maldives." Anthropological Linguistics 61(3): 364-388. | PDF
• 2018. "Improvising Rhythmic-Melodic Designs in South Indian Karnatak Music: U. Shrinivas Live in 1995." Analytical Approaches to World Music Journal 6(2): 1-23. | PDF
• 2016. “Modern Contours: Sinhala Poetry in Sri Lanka, 1913–1956.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 39(2): 1–18. | PDF
• 2015. “Veiling the Modular: Literary Language and Subjective Nationalism in Sinhala Radio Song of Sri Lanka, 1957–1964.” The South Asianist 4(1): 1–24. | PDF
• 2014. “Music for Inner Domains: Sinhala Song and the Arya and Hela Schools of Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Sri Lanka.” The Journal of Asian Studies 73(4): 1043–58. | PDF
• 2013. “‘Handa Eliya’ (The Moonlight): Mahagama Sekera’s Experimental Prose.” Sagar: A South Asia Research Journal XXI: 16–27. | PDF
• 2012. "Commonalities of Creative Resistance: Regional Nationalism in Rapiyel Tennakoon’s Bat Language and Sunil Santha’s Song for the Mother Tongue.” The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities 38(1/2): 1–24. | PDF
• 2010. “From Threatened by Modernity to Reinvented by Modernity: The History of the History of Indian Classical Music 1980–2006.” Ethnomusicology Review 15: 1–6. | PDF

Encyclopedic Entries

• 2020. "Singing and Song." The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. Wiley. | PDF