Radhika Parameswaran

Radhika Parameswaran
Indiana University

Radhika Parameswaran's research focuses on gender and media, global culture, postcolonial studies, and audience reception. Her publications, Coverage of Bride Burning in the Dallas Observer and Media Representations of Third World Women, document the frequent portrayal of Indian women in Western media as passive victims of a patriarchal culture that is defined by male violence against women. She argues that contemporary representations of Indian women in Western media have parallels to historical images of non-Western women in European colonial discourse. These publications provide suggestions for producing culturally sensitive representations of non-Western women and their communities. Continuing this line of inquiry, her publication, "Local Culture in Global Media,"critiques representations of race and gender in the August 1999 issue of the National Geographic. She has explored methodological issues related to ethnographic audience research in two articles. Her co-authored publication Contesting the Politics of Ethnography examines the European colonial history of ethnography as a methodology. In reviewing the rich contributions of recent ethnographic work by non-Western scholars, she argues for the political potential of new media ethnographies that can challenge colonial representations. Her essay, Feminist Media Ethnography in the Third World, explores in detail the difficulties and dilemmas she experienced in conducting ethnographic research on gender, sexuality, and popular culture in Hyderabad, India. Her forthcoming book chapter, Resuscitating Feminist Audience Studies, argues for the usefulness and relevance of media ethnographies that pay careful attention to the historical formation of reading and viewing publics.