• Features
  • Books
  • Teaching
  • Digital & Film
  • Blog
  • IHS
  • Texas
  • Spotlight
  • About

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Episode 93: Women and the Tamil Epics

Male-dominated narratives, male authors, and male-centered agency and priorities have been the norm throughout history, until the latter half of the 20th-century. So it’s no surprise that in ancient literature and epics, if you consider something like Homer’s Odyssey or other classics, even the Ramayana, the story of King Rama in early India, you see male authors telling the stories, adventures, and histories of men. In the Tamil literature of South India, however, we see something different. Guest Andrea Gutierrez introduces us to epic South Asian poems from the beginning of the first millennium that past the Bechdel test, when women’s narrative critiqued, cajoled, narrated, and provided guidance for the devout.

Posted February 14, 2017 More 15 Minute History, Podcasts

Recent Posts

  • Engaging Communities: Emilio Zamora and the Work of the Historian
  • NEP Year in Review
  • Alberto Torres Fuster, Artist, 1872-1922
  • IHS Roundtable: “Teaching Climate Change: Perspectives from History and the Humanities”
  • The Death of Yukio Mishima, 50 Years On
NOT EVEN PAST is produced by
The Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
We are supported by the College of Liberal Arts
And our Readers

Donate
Contact

All content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors, unless otherwise noted

    Sign up to receive the monthly Not Even Past newsletter

    • Features
    • Books
    • Teaching
    • Digital & Film
    • Blog
    • IHS
    • Texas
    • Spotlight
    • About