Munk Centre for International Studies

Series

Asian Heritage Month Event

Room Information

Contact Info

Eileen Lam

Description

Ambai is a historian and a creative writer who writes about love, relationships, quests and journeys in the Tamil region and elsewhere. Her real name is C S Lakshmi. Dr. C S Lakshmi has been an independent researcher in Women's Studies for the last thirty years. She has a Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has several books and articles to her credit.

She has been writing from the age of 16 and is a well-known writer in Tamil. Her stories have been translated in two volumes entitled A Purple Sea and In a Forest, A Deer. The latter recently shared the Hutch-Crossword award for translated fiction. She is currently the Director of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women).


The talk is basically about how Tamil culture through its literary and language traditions defines women through their bodies and the limitations and ramifications of such defining attempts. Several literary texts and everyday language traditions will be used as illustrations in the talk.


An informal gathering with light refreshments follows the talk.

Main Sponsor

Centre for South Asian Studies

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