SAC presents: Mark Whittaker

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 Whitaker 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. He will 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. Mark Whitaker is a Professor of Anthropology, and holds a Chair in Social and Behavioral Science, at the University of South Carolina, Aiken; he is also an adjunct Professor of Anthropology in the Anthropology Department at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. His work focuses on politics, religion, nationalism, journalism, biography, and new media technologies among Tamils in Sri Lanka and in their Diaspora.