TAMIL NATION LIBRARY: Culture

• * History and Imagination: Tamil Culture in the Global Context
   R Cheran, Darshan Ambalavanar, Chelva Kanaganayakam. 1997

ISBN 978-1-894770-36-1, Pages: 216

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[see also Tamil Culture: the Heart of Tamil National Consciousness]

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Tamils, originating in South India and Sri Lanka, constitute a large part of the diasporic South Asians in Canada, as well as the United States, Australia, and Europe. Many of them have fled the civil war in Sri Lanka. This rupture in the physical and imaginative landscape of the Tamils is undoubtedly reflected in their cultural production and has led to a renewal of their traditional aesthetics, which, in the words of the editors, “no longer adequately [capture] the richness or complexity of Tamil social and creative experience.” This collection covers a broad range of topics relating to Tamil culture in the world, all of them examining the ancient traditional aesthetics and how they relate to a layered modern reality.

R. Cheran - Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor. His recent publications include “Transnationalism, Development and Social Capital: Tamil Community Networks in Canada” in Organizing the Transnational: The Experience of Asian and Latin American Migrants in Canada (University of British Columbia Press 2007) and “Multiple Homes and Parallel Civil Societies: Refugee Diasporas and Transnationalism” (Refuge, 2006).

Darshan Ambalavanar -  Has recently completed his Ph.D in the Study of Religion at Harvard University. His dissertation entitled “Arumuga Navalar and the Construction of a Saiva Public in Colonial Jaffna” examined the transformation and continuities of South Asian religious traditions in the encounter with colonial modernity. His interests also include conversion movements, Christian theology and nationalism.

Chelva Kanaganayakam -  Professor of English, University of Toronto. His publications include Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction (2002); Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz (1997); Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and Their World (1995); and Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993).