Tamil Geographies

Martha Ann Selby is Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and the translator and editor of Grow Long, Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India. Indira Viswanathan Peterson is David B. Truman Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College and author of Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic: The Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi, also published by SUNY Press.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Dialogues of Space, Desire, and Gender in Tamil Cankam PoetryMartha Ann Selby2. Four Spatial Realms in TirukkōvaiyārNorman J. Cutler3. The Drama of the Kurravañci Fortune-teller: Land, Landscape, and Social Relations in an Eighteenth-century Tamil GenreIndira Viswanathan Peterson4. Ruling in the Gaze of God: Thoughts on Kanchipuram’s MandalaD. Dennis Hudson5. Cosmos, Realm, and Property in Early Medieval South IndiaDaud Ali6. Sanctum and Gopuram at Madurai: Aesthetics of Akam and Puram in Tamil Temple ArchitectureSamuel K. Parker7. From Wasteland to Bus Stand: The Relocation of demons in TamilnaduIsabelle Clark-Decés8. Waiting for Vellālakantarn: Narrative, Movement, and Making Place in a Tamil VillageDiane P. Mines9. Permeable Homes: Domestic Service, Household Space, and the Vulnerability of Class Boundaries in Urban South IndiaSara Dickey10. Gender Plays: Socio-spatial Paradigms on the Tamil Popular StageSusan SeizerBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

"…a wonderfully coherent volume that enables an exploration of continuities and disjuncture over time in the Tamil interdigitation of space, personhood, and emotion." — Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"…a fascinating collection of essays." — Journal of Oriental Research"A valuable collection of essays." — Religious Studies Review"…this is a superb interdisciplinary introduction to Tamil geographies." — Journal of Anthropological Research"This excellent book represents an important contribution to the cultural constructions of space. Through a series of reflections on ways in which people of Tamil Nadu have conceptualized and created and enacted space, over a long period of roughly two millennia, the volume offers a vivid longitudinal portrait based in one particular cultural region." — Richard H. Davis, Bard College"This is a fascinating collection on conceptions of space in Tamil culture treated from quite varying perspectives. The essays cohere wonderfully, and the reader emerges with a sense of the vibrant reality of this category and of its fluid nature. I found many intriguing and unexpected ideas throughout." — George L. Hart, University of California at Berkeley