Jul 06 2025 to Jul 06 2025 6 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Thanuja: A Memoir of Migration and Transition is the first memoir by a Sri Lankan Tamil transwoman who is now a German citizen. The recently published English translation has been gaining attention across social media for its powerful account of gender, displacement, and resilience across continents.

This session reflects on the layered process of translating Thanuja Singam’s life story, not only across languages but also across histories, geographies, and identity formations. In placing the memoir in dialogue with the expanding field of Indian trans literature, the discussion opens up questions around how language shapes identity, how trans voices find space on the page, and how literary traditions both support and constrain such narratives.

The conversation will engage with the evolving landscape of trans writing in South Asia, examining the literary, political, and affective threads that connect diverse trans experiences. It also considers how translation can serve as a bridge between communities, turning individual testimony into collective memory.

Speakers

Kiran Keshavamurthy
Assistant Prof. of English, IIT Guwahati
Kiran Keshavamurthy is Assistant Professor of English at IIT Guwahati. He completed his PhD on modern Tamil literature from the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at University of California Berkeley. His research interests include modern Indian literatures, gender and sexuality and caste studies. He is currently working on a couple of translations of a volume of articles and speeches by four major Tamil thinkers, some of whom were the founders of the Communist and anti-caste Self-Respect Movements in Tamil Nadu and a memoir by a Tamil Dalit folk artist. He is also working on a monograph on the poetics of the major modernist and romantic Tamil poet and writer, Subramania Bharati.

Naresh Keerthi
Assistant Prof. of Sanskrit, Ashoka University
Naresh Keerthi is Assistant Professor of Sanskrit Studies at Ashoka University, Haryana. His primary research is in the overlapping literary cultures of Sanskrit, Prakrit and their connections to south Indian languages Tamil,Kannada and Telugu.  Alongside premodern literary texts, literary theory and commentaries (kāvya, nāṭaka, kāvyaśāstra), Naresh is also interested in the world of the songs (saṅgīta) and studies the history of music and dance in Early Modern South India. He is working on a monograph on the celebrated 18th century musician Muttusvāmi Dīkṣita. On weekends, Naresh worries about the future of his cactuses and the classical humanities.