Seventh Annual Tamil Studies Conference to take place in Toronto

The Seventh Annual Tamil Studies Conference will be held in Toronto, Canada, 11–12 May 2012. It is being organised by the University of Toronto the University of Windsor. The plenary speakers are Noboru Karashima, Emeritus Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan; and A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Professor, Madras Institute for Development Studies, Chennai, India. This conference aims to understand the means by which people come to know, feel, and reflect upon their past. Questions of history, memory, and heritage are all guided by the ethical concerns of the present and by desires regarding the future. The production of alternatives to the dominant narrative might also entail their own forms of exclusion. Contestation arises precisely when the past becomes a resource to remake the contemporary world. But how do we narrate pasts? What counts as “evidence” in such narrations? Whose stories prevail? Which pasts are silenced? More information.