The essays in this vibrant collection, selected from the 2007 Tamil Studies Conference, range across a number of disciplines to address issues central to contemporary Tamil Studies. Contributions deliberately encompass multiple areas of inquiry — such as history, culture, religion, and gender — and divergent perspectives, in order to allow for a meaningful exchange of ideas relevant to Tamil identity. With all its diversity, New Demarcations is bound together by a common interest in the politics of identity as it relates to Tamil Studies.

Dr. R. Cheran is a Tamil Canadian academic, poet, playwright, and journalist. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Windsor in Canada. He has authored over fifteen books in Tamil, and his work has been translated into twenty languages. Several volumes of his work have been published in English translation, including The Second Sunrise (translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom, 2010), In a Time of Burning (translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom and Sascha Ebeling, 2013), and You Cannot Turn Away (translated by Chelva Kanaganayakam, 2011). His poems in English translation have also been published in numerous literary magazines, such as Bomb (New York), Modern Poetry in Translation, Many Mountains Moving, Exiled Ink, Mantra Review, and Talisman.

R. Cheran's profile page

Darshan Ambalavanar is a visiting fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Darshan Ambalavanar's profile page

Chelva Kanaganayakam is currently an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. His publications include Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993); Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and Their World (1995) and Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz (1997).

Chelva Kanaganayakam's profile page