A Kerala Studies Blog
Radhika K. M.’s sketches of Kerala’s lesser-known architectural marvels combine detail with a sense of liveliness. From ancient places of worship to traditional homes in Thrissur and Alappuzha, the sketches remind us that Kerala’s heritage goes beyond a few tourist destinations.
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Moving between memory and history, poetry and prose, Kerala and Tanzania, May Joseph reflects on her parents’ experiences as Malayali migrants to Tanzania in the mid-twentieth century.
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Sarath Pillai writes about private collections of land-deeds and official records of Malayalees, and how they could be valuable sources[…]
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The Temple Entry Proclamation is considered a pivotal moment in Kerala renaissance. Jenny Rowena delves into lesser known facets of the temple entry movement to interrogate the Malayalee consensus about the movement as one which granted rights to oppressed lower castes and ushered in a renaissance period in Kerala.
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The scope of archaeology in Kerala has remained limited, owing to persisting antiquarian attitude to archaeological remains, the conflation of archaeology with history, and the perception that Kerala lacks archaeological potential. Rachel Varghese revisits these assumptions, making a case for the possibilities that archaeology could offer for Kerala
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Saidalavi P. C. interviews the scholar, Robin Jeffrey, on his well-known body of work on Kerala, and his early experiences as a Canadian graduate student in Kerala in the 1960s.
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Drawing our attention to a largely unexplored, and incredibly vast, archive of Travancorean history, Dr. Vysakh A. S. presents a few intriguing snippets from Uma Maheshwari’s book on the eponymous archive, Mathilakom Records.
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Traditional elites harboured peculiar notions of purity and pollution in pre-modern Kerala, which were revised by the neo-savarna of twentieth-century. This article reflects on notions of personal hygiene, cleanliness and clothing, using two excerpts from early-modern Kerala.
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Ever since his works began to be translated into Malayalam in the mid-nineteenth century, Shakespeare’s adaptations have appeared as books, plays, comics and films in Kerala. Thea Buckley writes about the history of Kerala’s engagement with Shakespearean literature.
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The British Raj encountered a complex legal ecosystem in Malabar. Santhosh Abraham writes about the ways in which the[…]
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