2010 TAMIL STUDIES CONFERENCE
Thursday, May 13
6.00-8.00PM Reception – Munk Centre
Friday, May 14
8.30-9.30 a.m: Registration at the Buttery
9.30-10:00 a.m.: Welcome at Ignatieff Theatre
10.00 a.m. – 12.00 p.m.: SESSION 1
Panel A: Tea Women: Gender, Marginality and Agency – Ignatieff Theatre
Chair: Amali Philips
Sasikumar Balasundaram: Operation or Oppression: Historical, Socioeconomic, and Political Marginalization of the Up-country Tamils and Its Impact on Women’s Reproductive Choice
Daniel Bass: Rumors about Reproduction and the Reproduction of Rumors in the Up-country of Sri Lanka
Mythri Jegathesan: Articulating Life Choices and Attributing Value among Hill Country Tamil Women in Sri Lanka
Amali Philips: Unequal Citizens: Women’s Experiences of Gender and Culture in Sri Lanka’s Tea Estates
Panel B: Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Tamil Literary Worlds – Combination Room
Chair: Bhavani Raman
Elizabeth Segran: Friendship and Other Marginalities: Female Bonds in the Classical Tamil Tradition
Kiran Keshavamurthy: The Shifting Marginalities of Friendship and Marriage in Sundara Ramaswamy’s Kuzhandaikal, Penkal, Aankal (Children, Women, Men)
Preetha Mani: Conjugal self, conjugal citizen: representations of Indian citizenship in Tamil and Hindi short story writing, 1950-1970
Panel C: The Ritual Production of Place – Seeley Hall
Chair: Katherine Young
Katherine Young: Constant Movement, across Time and Space: Establishing and Destabilizing notions of Culture and Identity
Vijaya Kumaar Babu: Utilization of Human Resources Tamil Inscriptions of Andhra Desa-A Select Study
Samuel Holt: Framing a Pilgrimage: An Exercise in Visual Representation
Anna Seastrand: Styles, Stories, Scripts: Telugu and Tamil in Nayaka-Period Mural Painting in Tamil Nadu
12.00-1.00 p.m.: Lunch at Munk Centre Garden
1.00-3.00 p.m.: SESSION 2
Panel A: The Dangers of Representation: Critical Engagements with Mark Whitaker’s Learning Politics from Sivaram- Ignatieff Theatre
Chair: Francis Cody
Sidharthan Maunaguru: Tracing the Fragments: A Study on Learning Politics from Sivaram
Suppiramaniam Nanthikesan: Learning from Sivaram – Politics of Counter-Terrorism
Francis Cody: Learning Anthropology from Mark Whitaker
Mark Whitaker: Response
Panel B: The Productivity of Margins: Timescapes and Sexuality in the Making of Community – Combination Room
Chair: Laura Brown
Elaine Craddock: Negotiating Marginality: Transgender Communities in Tamilnadu
Yalini Jothilingam: Power, Perception and Periphery: Exploring gender and heteronormativity through Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy
Laura Brown: Kaikari Circulations and Community Distinctions: Talk about Timescapes in Maligai Kadai
Kala Shreen: Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Tamil Rituals: Nagarathar Rites of Passage
Panel C: Writing, Performance, and New Circuits of Knowledge: Representations of Dance – Seeley Hall
Chair: Davesh Soneji
Davesh Soneji: Siva’s Courtesans: Religion, Rhetoric, and Self-Representation in Early Twentieth-Century Writing by Devadasis
Joep Bor & Tiziana Leucci: The European Tour of Five Tamil Devadasis, Their Nattuvanar and Two Other Musicians, 1838-1839
Ahalya Satkunaratnam: The Strategies of Staging War: Performing Bharata Natyam in Colombo Sri Lanka
3.00-3.30 p.m.: Refreshments in Buttery
3.30-5.30 p.m.: SESSION 3
Panel A: Thinking about “Mobilization”: Narratives and Naming in the Production of a Tamil Dalit Politics – Ignatieff Theatre
Chair: Rupa Viwanath
Gajendran Ayyathurai: Reconstruction of the Past and Dilemmas of the Present: Caste, Electoral Politics, and the Marginalized
Michael Collins: Revisiting Antiquity: The Politics of the Past in Modern Dalit Political Discourse
Rupa Viswanath: The political work of “labour”: Dalit difference and Dalit labourers in 1920s Madras
Narendra Subramanian: Discussant
Panel B: Mass Mediations and the New Tamil Public Sphere – Combination Room
Chair: Kajri Jain
Pushpa Arabindoo: Idhuvaa Chennai? Reading a city’s public in a newspaper’s publicity campaign
Shaseevan Ganeshanatha: Constructing Tamil Worlds in Cyberspace
S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole: The Internet and Mobility in the Reconstruction of the Past: A Study through a Reassessment of Arumuka Navalar and Caste Claims
Stephen Inglis: A Date with a Dream
Panel C: Health Care and Help Seeking in the Tamil Diaspora in Toronto – Seeley Hall
Chair: Morton Beiser
Morton Beiser: TBA
Laura Simich: Social Support in Social Context: Considerations for Building Resiliency and Social Equity.
Joseph A. Chandrakanthan: Discussion
Nalini Pandalangat: Help-Seeking in the Sri Lankan Tamil Community in Toronto
6.00-7.45: Plenary Speaker: Prof. Raj Gauthaman, Pondicherry Post Graduate Centre – Ignatieff Theatre
7.45: Dinner at Munk Centre
Saturday, May 15
9.00-10.00 a.m.: Registration at Buttery
10.00 a.m. – 12.00 p.m.: SESSION 1
Panel A: The Nation Imagined in Transnational Space – Ignatieff Theatre
Chair: Aparna Sundar
Angela Britto: Naan Poitu Varen : Representations of Nation by Tamil Diasporic Writers
Kitana Ananda: Mobilizing Diaspora: Tamil Activisms at War’s End
Ahalya Satkunaratnam: The Strategies of Staging War: Performing Bharata Natyam in Colombo Sri Lanka
R. Sivachandran: Paradigm Shift to Population and Changing Patterns of Sociocultural Norms in Northern Sri Lanka
Panel B: Engaging Kartigesu Sivathamby’s Work – Combination Room
Chair: Srilata Raman
Bernard Bate: Speaking Swadeshi, Madras 1907
Chelva Kanaganayakam: Histories of Literature and Literary Histories in Tamil
P. Ragupathy: Being a Tamil and Sri Lankan:2005 and 2010.
Bhavani Raman: Conceptualizing Tamil Studies
Panel C:Incommensurability and the Production of Difference – Seeley Hall
Chair: Daniel Bass
Vasuki Shanmuganathan : Authentic, New and Rare Ceylonese at the Zoo: Creating Racialized Images for German Colonial Pursuits, 1870-1910.
Ravi Vaitheespara: Thiruvarangam Pillai and the ‘Ceylon Connection’ in 20th Century Tamil-Saivite Revival in Tamil Nadu
Christina Davis: The Sinhala “Voice:” Ethnic Conflict and the Configuration of Difference in Sri Lanka
Ravindran Sriramachandran: Dominant Community, Incommensurability and the Tamil Plantation Laborer
12.00-1.00 p.m.: Lunch at Munk Centre Gardens
1.00-3.00 p.m.: SESSION 2
Panel A: Citizenship, Transnationalism, and the Diaspora – Ignatieff Theatre
Chair: Sonia Das
Sangeetha Navaratnam: Confessions of a Sri Lankan Customs and Immigration officer: Reflections on Race and Space at a major Canadian airport.
Sonia Das: Mapping a Heritage Language Industry: A Genealogy of Transnational Circulations within French-Tamil Societies
Jeyanithe A. Karunanithy: Circulation of Trauma narratives and the (re)construction of an ‘asylum world’: The paradox of transnational living for Tamil asylum-seekers in Canada
Panel B: Tamil Diaspora: Shifting Cultural Contours (Tamil Language Panel) – Combination Room
Chair: Dr. Zulfika Ismail
K.Navam: Tamil Literary journals in the diaspora and their role in cultural transformation
Dr.Kausalya Subramanian: Preservation of Tamil musical and dance heritage in the Diaspora
Dr.N.Subramanian: New horizons in Tamil Diasporic literature
Agiilan Thadchanamoorthy: The Changes Diaspora has made in Sri Lankan Tamils’ Life in India
Panel C: Migration, Indigenous Communities, and Art Practices: A Dialogue on Linguistic Nationalism – Seeley Hall
Chair: Shiva Prakash
Shiva Prakash: Karagattam: A Contrastive Study of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka
S. Karmegam: Being Nomad, Becoming ‘Native’: Performance, Identity, and Everyday life of Shadow Puppet Performers of Tamilnadu
Krishnamurthy Hanur: Karaga, Tigulas, Cultural Life: Transformation of a Performance Tradition in a ‘New’ Socio-cultural Context
A.Dhananjeyan: Performing in the Peripheral Stage: An Enquiry into the Nature and the Role Ethnic Bilingual Nomadic Performers in Tamilnadu
3.00-3.30 p.m.: Refreshments at the Buttery
3.30-5.30 p.m.: SESSION 3
Panel A: SAVAC: Roundtable on Representing Protest – Seeley Hall
The individuals presenting for this panel are all apart of the SAVAC creative staff : Haema Sivanesan , Koko Kurunathan , as well as artist facilitators : Gitanjali Lena, Nahed Mansour.
Panel B: Constituting Constitution for Sri Lanka – Ingatieff Theatre
Chair: Sharryn Aiken
Vasuki Nesiah: Back to the Future: Federalism and the Promised Land
Rohan Edrisinha: Post-Election Prospects for a Political Solution in Sri Lanka
A.R.M. Imtiyaz: Muslim Political Elites in Post-war Sri Lanka: Marginality and Plurality
Devanesan Nesiah: Articulating the Concerns of the Ethnic Minorities in Relation to Constitutional reform
5.30-6.00 p.m.: Refreshments at the Buttery
6.00-7.30 p.m.: Plenary Lecture: Prof. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, UCLA – Ingatieff Theatre
