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Title: Collective trauma, historical memories and the refashioning of national narratives: responses of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora to the defeat of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Where & When:  November 17, 2009
                           341 Eggers Hall
                           12:30 pm

Type of Activity: Speaker

Speaking: Mark Whitaker, University of North Carolina at Aiken

Summary: Whitaker have been conducting research with Sri Lankan Tamils since 1981, and his work has followed many of his old friends, colleagues and informants into exile in Europe and North America. In this paper, based on interviews conducted in Toronto, Atlanta and London, he will discuss the current struggle within the Tamil Diaspora to envision a new future for their community in the face of this raw historical event. More theoretically, Whitaker will try to show how the people he talked to used an array of available, variously constructed, historical memories – some rooted in Sri Lanka’s landscape and its past tragedies, some forged in Diaspora and within its media saturated civic spaces -- to come to grips with their collective trauma.

Sponsorship: The South Asia Center

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