CTF 2025: Tamil Horizons and Borders

May 22–24, 2025

The Chicago Tamil Forum 2025 brings into focus the horizons and borders which structure or unsettle our study of Tamil or Tamilized linguistic formations, cultures, and places. It aims to reflect on the significance of Tamil for the definitions of geographical, historical, and cultural formations in South Asia and in the world; and to explore the role of references, invocations and emanations of Tamil for the political, cultural, and historical consciousness of people and groups around the world. Organized by Eléonore Rimbault.

May 22, 2025, 5pm, Keynote Lecture
Sharika Thiranagama (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University): “Extimacy and Intimacy: Caste and Ethnicity in Sri Lankan and South India”

May 23–24, 2025 workshop

Participants:
– Vasugi Kailasam (Assistant Professor, Department of South & South East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley)
– Prashant Kumar (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Chicago)
– Sidharthan Maunaguru (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Chair of Tamil Studies, Department of Historical & Cultural Studies, University of Toronto)
– Jayaseelan Raj (Senior Lecturer, Anthropology & International Development, King’s College London)
– Eléonore Rimbault (Collegiate Assistant Professor & Harper-Schmidt Fellow, University of Chicago)
– Zoe Sherinian (Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Oklahoma)
– Jim Sykes (Associate Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania)
– Sharika Thiranagama (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University)

Email: erimbault@uchicago.edu for more information