Radhika Parameswaran

Radhika Parmeswaran holds an endowed Herman B. Wells chair at Indiana University, Bloomington. A professor and former chair of journalism there, Parameswaran has published in leading journals, contributing to analysis of the ways in which colonialism, nationalism and globalization shape the social construction of modernity and gender.

Background

Parameswaran grew up in a city located in the southern part of India known as Hyderabad. She received a Masters in Media Studies at Texas Christian University in the United States and a Masters in Communication and Journalism from Osmania University in India. She also received her Ph.D. in Mass Communication with a minor in gender studies at the University of Iowa.

Scholarly work

Parameswaran is the author of two monograph articles, and she has published 27 journal articles and 13 book chapters. Her articles have been published in the following journals: Global Media & Communication, Journal of Communication, Journal of Children & Media, Communication, Culture & Critique, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Theory, Qualitative Inquiry, Communication Review, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. She was also the editor-in-chief of the academic journal, Communication, Culture & Critique, from 2014 to 2016.

Her two monographs are in the journal, Journalism & Communication Monographs, which is an official publication of the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). These monographs touch on some of her main research topics. In her article, "Global media events in India: Contests over beauty, gender, and nation," Parameswaran studied how global beauty pageants affect non-western countries. The theory of cultural imperialism suggests that dominant western ideals can overtake other nations. Parameswaran shows that the relationship is more complicated. Local national and regional ideals can get woven into global ideals, allowing both sides to influence each other's values, and standards. Gender, beauty standards, and cultural politics also show that intersectionality shapes flows of western culture to non-western locations. In the other monograph, "Melanin on the margins: Advertising and the cultural politics of fair/light/white beauty in India", Parameswaran and Cardoza studied how companies advertise and entice women to buy skin lightening products. Many magazines and advertisements in India show that light skin is beautiful and they reinforce that normative expectation, particularly for Indian women. Hierarchies of race, gender, caste, ethnicity, and class modify and create spaces of privilege and marginalization within beauty culture.

Other contributions

In addition to being the editor-in-chief of Communication, Culture & Critique, Parameswaran was also a Volume Editor for The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, a seven volume set. She was the editor for the volume, Audience and Interpretation. For her scholarly work, Parameswaran received various awards over the years. She received the 2015 Teresa Award for outstanding feminist research from the International Communication Association. She has also been awarded six top research paper awards. Five have been awarded from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and one has been from the International Communication Association. Indiana University has also recognized her work. She was awarded with the Trustees Teaching Award in the School of Journalism in the spring semester of 2009 and the Gretchen Kemp Teaching Award for Outstanding Teaching in the School of Journalism at Indiana University two times, both in 2011 and in 2002.

She has been quoted by various news outlets regarding colorism and skin whitening.

See also

• Postcolonialism

Further reading

• Parameswaran, R. (2015). "Shaming the Nation on Public Affairs Television". Journalism Studies. 16 (5): 680–691. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2015.1054175. S2CID 142766089.
• Parameswaran, R. (2015). "Animalizing India: Emerging signs of an unruly market". Consumption Markets & Culture. 18 (6): 517–538. doi:10.1080/10253866.2015.1052966. S2CID 143102308.
• Parameswaran, R. (2014). "Globalization, beauty regimes, and mediascapes in the new India". In C. Carter; L. McLaughlin; L. Steiner (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 363–373.
• Birthisel, J.; Parameswaran, R. (2013). "Postings on the Rise of the Rest". Journal of Communication Inquiry. 37 (3): 217–232. doi:10.1177/0196859913489571. S2CID 143661835.
• Parameswaran, R. (2013). "Media culture and childhood in the age of globalization". In D. Lemish (ed.). Routledge Handbook on Children, Adolescents, and Media. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 75–82.
• Parameswaran, R. (2012). "Watching Barkha Dutt: Turning on the news in television studies". South Asian History and Culture. 3 (4): 626–635. doi:10.1080/19472498.2012.720094. S2CID 144054099.
• Parameswaran, R. (2012). "Studying the Elusive Audience". The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies. doi:10.1002/9781444361506.wbiems105. ISBN 9781405193566.
• Parameswaran, R. (2010). "The rise of China and India". Global Media and Communication. 6 (3): 285–290. doi:10.1177/1742766510384966. S2CID 143451104.
• Parameswaran, R. (2011). "E-raceing color: Gender and transnational visual economies of beauty". In R. Hegde (ed.). Circuits of visibility: Gender and transnational media cultures. New York, NY: NYU Press. pp. 68–86.
• Duvall, S.-S. (2015). "Not "Simply the Breast"". Feminist Media Studies. 15 (2): 324–340. doi:10.1080/14680777.2014.919334. S2CID 143104070.
• Lengel, L. B. (1998). "Researching the "Other," Transforming Ourselves: Methodological Considerations of Feminist Ethnography". Journal of Communication Inquiry. 22 (3): 229–250. doi:10.1177/0196859998022003001. S2CID 145426631.
• Luo, W. (2012). "Selling Cosmetic Surgery and Beauty Ideals: The Female Body in the Web Sites of Chinese Hospitals". Women's Studies in Communication. 35: 68–95. doi:10.1080/07491409.2012.667055. S2CID 143579826.
• Osuri, G. (2008). "Ash‐coloured whiteness: The transfiguration of Aishwarya Rai". South Asian Popular Culture. 6 (2): 109–123. doi:10.1080/14746680802365212. S2CID 144835964.
• Saraswati, L. A. (2010). "Cosmopolitan Whiteness: The Effects and Affects of Skin-Whitening Advertisements in a Transnational Women's Magazine in Indonesia". Meridians. 10 (2): 15–41. doi:10.2979/meridians.2010.10.2.15. S2CID 145219005.
• Saraswati, L. A. (2012). ""Malu": Coloring Shame and Shaming the Color of Beauty in Transnational Indonesia". Feminist Studies. 38 (1): 113–140. doi:10.1353/fem.2012.0021. JSTOR 23269172. S2CID 245658858.
• Schroeder, J. E. (2015). "Communicating identity/Consuming difference". Consumption Markets & Culture. 18 (6): 485–489. doi:10.1080/10253866.2015.1053662. S2CID 145309790.
• Valdivia, A. N. (2011). "Building a Feminist Trajectory". Communication, Culture & Critique. 4 (4): 355–360. doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2011.01110.x.
• Woolston, J. (2010). "Nancy Drew's Body: The Case of the Autonomous Female Sleuth". Studies in the Novel. 42 (1/2): 173–184. doi:10.1353/sdn.2010.0002. JSTOR 29533975. S2CID 145726151.
• Yang, F.-C. I. (2007). "Beautiful-and-Bad Woman: Media Feminism and the Politics of Its Construction". Feminist Studies. 33 (2): 361–383. doi:10.2307/20459146. JSTOR 20459146.

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