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Caste and Tourism: The Case of Ancestral Homestays
Renovated ancestral homes have become a mainstay of tourism in Kerala. Soumithra investigates how ancestral homestays not only draw from existing caste and class hierarchies, but also play a role in sustaining these in the era of the supposedly free market.
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Memories of Slavery: The Bonded Labour System in Valliyoorkaav Temple
Through oral narratives collected during their fieldwork, Shibina and Anjitha delve into the obscure history of a bonded labour system that was practiced in the Valliyurkaav temple of Wayanad.
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‘Everything Old is New Again’: Telling the Story of the Sabarimala Battle
In anticipation of Deepa Das Acevedo’s forthcoming book, The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), Ala spoke to Deepa about the nuances of the case, and the meeting of the old and the new in this heavily mediatised legal battle for women’s entry into a temple.
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Kerala’s Painkili Romance with Pulp Fiction
Pulp fiction in Kerala remains a genre that does not receive much attention, despite the significant role it has played in cultivating a reading culture in Kerala. Serialised novels in Malayalam weeklies had readers hooked for decades. Shibu B S delves into the rich world of painkili (‘songbird’) novels in Kerala.
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[Podcast] Rethinking ‘Keraleeyatha’: Behind the Malayalam Cinema ‘Brand’
With streaming services bringing transnational attention to Malayalam cinema, it becomes important to examine the nature of Kerala’s “new gen” cinema and to locate it in a longer history. C S Venkiteswaran, film critic, Don Palathara, film director, and Jolly Chirayath, actor, feature in Ala’s first audio essay on cinema in Kerala.
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Work from Home or Social Quarantine? Narratives of Women IT Professionals in Kerala
At a time when working from home, adopted at the height of the pandemic, is being presented as offering added flexibility for women in the workplace, G S Divya delves into the lived experiences of Malayali women in the IT sector to examine the patriarchal implications of ‘work-from-home’.
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Becoming Adivasi, Becoming Dalit: Reading Mavelimantam with Kancha Ilaiah
K J Baby’s 1991 novel, Mavelimantam, is the story of the resistance of the Adiyor community against centuries-old slavery at a historical point where feudalism was joining hands with emerging colonial forces in India. Mileena re-reads the novel with reference to the concept of Dalitisation by Kancha Ilaiah.
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പൊളിച്ചെഴുതപ്പെടുന്ന ആൺകുട്ടിക്കാലം: എം ആർ രേണുകുമാറിൻ്റെ കുട്ടികൾക്കുവേണ്ടിയുള്ള കഥകളിലൂടെ.
എം ആർ രേണുകുമാർ കുട്ടികൾക്കുവേണ്ടി എഴുതിയ മൂന്ന് പുസ്തകങ്ങൾ ഇവിടെ അവലോകനം ചെയ്യുന്നു. ആൺകുട്ടിക്കാലത്തിൻ്റെ സങ്കീർണ്ണമായ വിവരണത്തിലൂടെ ജാതീയത, ലിംഗഭേദം, അരികുവത്കരണം എന്നിവ യുവ വായനക്കാർക്ക് മുൻപിൽ പുനർവായനയ്ക്ക് വിധേയമാക്കുന്നു.
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The Ecology of Purushapretham (2023)
Purushapretham has been among this year’s most intriguing releases so far, seeming like a police procedural at the outset but revealing hidden depths. Deepti delves into how the director draws viewers into a complex ecology of human and nonhuman actors, marking an exciting addition to the emergent ‘cli-fi’ genre in Malayalam cinema.
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