This research analyzes the construction, negotiation and maintenance of social ‘space’ amongst rural women belonging to the Sri Lankan Muslim, Sinhalese and Estate Tamil ethnic communities in Yahalathenna-west, by using a combination of ethnographic research techniques, together…
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This dissertation studies premodern temple architecture, freestanding sculpted stones, and Tamil language inscriptions patronized by south Indian merchants in south India and China. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, Indian Ocean trade was at its apex, connecting popula…
This dissertation explores the production and maintenance of difference among Tamil and Muslim adolescents in Kandy, Sri Lanka, under the conditions of an ongoing civil war between the Sri Lankan government and a Tamil insurgency group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE…
My dissertation addresses the political, economic, and sociocultural dynamics of Tamil ethnic and cultural identity in contemporary Malaysia and Bangalore, South India. In both sites, a heightened sense of Tamil identity is occurring in response to state policies and discourses …
In this dissertation, I investigate a popular type of narrative literature called in Tamil talapurāṇam (literally “place-lore”), which describes the legends associated with Hindu shrines as well as the manner in which rituals at the temple must be conducted. Though such texts we…
This dissertation examines the Tirukkuṟaḷ, a poem composed in Tamil around the fifth century C.E. that is today attributed to an author named Tiruvaḷḷuvar. The poem consists of 1,330 verses arranged into 133 chapters of ten verses each, which are then divided into three thematic…
In this thesis, I argue that the music of the Catholic Church of South India, which draws from Indian and Western music genres, functions as a cultural bridge allowing the worshiper to express a distinctively Catholic identity without distancing themselves from their Hindu roots…
This dissertation examines the life and works of a nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Tamil yogi named Sri Sabhapati Swami (Śrī Sabhāpati Svāmī, Capāpati Cuvāmikaḷ, ca. 1828–1923/4), specifically the “translocalization” of his unique vernacular literature on a system of yoga…