Dr. Susan Thomas, Associate Professor in the department of History, Sree Sankaracharya University, delivered the 13th A.K Baby memorial lecture on 27, March 2014 on the topic, Regulating the Syrian Christian Women: Strategies of Church Codes and Regulations. Delivering the lecture, Dr. Susan argued that the communities that are found in Kerala as is the case with communities elsewhere in India evolved in the current form during the colonial period. This process of community formation is an area which has received much attention of the academic world in the past decades. Women’s history has especially focused on the reconstitution of patriarchy in the colonial period. The focus of the lecture was to understand the various strategies employed by the Syrian Christian Church of the two factions the Puthenkuru and the Pazhayakuru to engender the women in the process of community formation.The Syrian Christian community in the colonial period witnessed interventions by various colonial powers to regulate the community and mould it along the lines of European Christianity both theologically and socially. This led to the community splitting to various factions. By the end of the 19th century, two main factions that were mentioned before were crystallized into two mutually excluding communities. The configuration of these communities can be traced through the various decrees, rules and regulations passed by these factions from time to time. Engendering of the women, the key issue explored was brought out by looking at strategies of Reordering of Space, Regulation of Self, Control of Individuals and the resultant Reconstitution of power networks. How gender codes are upheld, reinforced and reproduced was also analyzed by Dr. Susan. The lecture was followed by an active interactive session.
Presiding over the function, Prof. Annie Jose, who heads the department, spoke on the relevance of the memorial lecture. Dr. Sebastian Joseph who coordinated the programme welcomed and introduced the speaker and Ms Juby John extended the vote of thanks. Apart from members of faculty like Prof. Suja K Sam, Ms. Tresa Divya, the memorial lecture was attended by Research Fellows in History and English, PG students of History, Psychology and Malayalam.
