Tamil Studies Conference

Program for Fall 2019! Please do come--there is lot happening!

Tamil Studies Fall Programs 2019! Please do come--there is a lot happening!

The University of Toronto will be hosting a special edition of the Tamil Studies Conference in the form of a small, free, one-day workshop in memory of Prof. Chelva Kanaganayakam on June 1st.

Lecture by Professor Ronit Ricci, Lanka and the Exilic Imagination.
April 6th, 2016

Exciting course at UTSC - Tamil Studies

GASC59H3/ HIS C59 H3
BEING TAMIL: RACE, CULTURE, NATION
WINTER 2016

This class is an introduction to modern Tamil identities with a focus on Tamil speaking populations in Canada, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Its main purpose is to explore in context of multiple Tamil worlds, the transformative effects of colonialism on culture, religion, literary arts and social relations and explore the more recent history of postcolonial nation-states of Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia in this light. No prior background in Tamil language or history is necessary.

QUESTIONS ? EMAIL : [email protected]

Scattered like floating lotus
Defying land and time,
Our wings gained strength.
Your life the essence of kindness
----
We can tread on fire, or
Defy the wind;
We cannot lose our lives

These lines from an elegy I wrote for a close friend of mine who passed away last year were perhaps the last poem Chelva Kanaganayakam translated from Tamil to English. After reading and translating the poem Chelva was so deeply moved and read it out to Thiru, his beloved wife. Then he called me in the middle of the night to share my grief. I was inconsolable. Even though I was somewhat used to the dreaded midnight or early morning phone calls from Sri Lanka over the past several years of war and devastation, I was completely unprepared for the grim email message from Chelva's brother-in-law late last night.

After attending the official function inducting him as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in Québec City on November 22, 2014, Chelva suffered a cardiac arrest and passed away. A great man of kindness, wisdom and intellectual rigor is no more.

Chelva Kanaganyakam, received his bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka and his doctoral degree at the University of British Columbia. After his doctoral studies he joined the University of Toronto's Department of English and became professor of English. He was the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Munk School of Global affairs.

His research and teaching interests were post- colonial studies, as well as diasporic writings and translations. While the geographic" focus of his research revolved around South Asia and South East Asia, Chelva was always attracted to "hybridity and hierarchy of literatures in English and in the vernacular languages of these regions and the diaspora. He would often pose the question whether one should have some grasp of a vernacular language rather than, or in addition to, French, German or Spanish in order to undertake serious research?

"The centrality of the literary text" he would argue, "cannot be erased although the frame could be one that includes but goes beyond a Eurocentric one." In his constant search for alternative ways of configuring the field of postcolonial studies, Chelva was prolific in writing and publishing.

In the study of literary history Chelva was keenly interested in venturing into new methodologies. Another theme that animated his current work is the notion of aesthetics in Tamil writings that emerged as a response and resistance to war, loss, genocide and trauma. Through his translations and accompanying critical reviews, Chleva was grappling with the question of how notions of aesthetics and poetics as articulated by modern writers of resistance in the Tamil context can challenge traditional ideals and formulations of aesthetics.
Chelva was an excellent translator of fiction and poetry from Tamil to English, his translation of Nedunalvaadai - a classical Sangam Tamil epic - is a great work of finesse, beauty and painstaking detail. Indeed, Chelva translated almost all of the great contemporary Tamil writers from Sri Lanka.

Chelva was one of the founding members of the annual Toronto Tamil studies conference at the University of Toronto since 2006. The conference is the largest international Tamil Studies conference in North America.

Some of his other key works include: In our Translated World: Global Tamil Poetry (2013), Nedunalvaadai (in Tamil, 2010), Wilting Laughter: Three Tamil Poets (2009), You Cannot Turn Away (2010),Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction (2002); Ed. Lutesong and Lament: Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka (2001); Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz (1997); Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and Their World (1995); Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993).

A few months ago Chelva completed compiling, translating and editing a grand volume of Tamil literature since 1948 titled Uprooting the Pumpkin for Oxford University Press. He spent hundreds of sleepless nights working on this volume and it is so painful that he was unable to see the volume in print.

At the time of his death Chelva was working on a massive volume on the history of South Asian literatures in English. It is so unfortunate that this project as well as his other translation projects will not be completed by him.

Chelva's students, friends and colleagues will always remember his warm, welcoming but slightly hidden smile and open heart, the heart that suddenly failed him, and us too.

Cheran
Dr. R. Cheran is a poet and associate professor of Sociology at the University of Windsor.