Tamil Worlds: an academic question

[ilekani]

Imagine you are the prof of a course called Tamil Worlds at some major foreign institution. The students are young people, some Tamil, some children of Tamils, some foreigners. What would your first assigned reading be, to orient them to "Tamil worlds". What would your syllabus look like?

(Someone online said she was taking such a course, I was a little bit surprised by some of the contents. But answer without Googling first!!)