A fascinating meditation on the multifaceted persona of celebrity chef, author, and activist Padma Lakshmi.
This presentation will track culinary celebrity Padma Lakshmi’s evolving avatars across time and different nodes in a multi-platform transnational media ecosystem. Who is Padma Lakshmi? An “exotic” upper caste Indian American woman whose beauty predictably paved her journey towards global celebrity? A scrappy immigrant survivor of trauma whose life story serves as a testimony to the American dream’s accessibility? A popular feminist figure whose mediated food politics—leavened with inclusive nationalism—on a digital streaming platform upholds the causes of gender and race equity?
This keynote is presented by Console-ing Passions Conference 2024. It is free and open to the public. All are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Radhika Parameswaran is Associate Dean and Herman B Wells Endowed Professor (Class of 1950) in The Media School, Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research areas span feminist cultural studies, globalization and media, postcolonial media studies, South Asia, and qualitative research methods. Her major publications include a 2013 Wiley-Blackwell edited encyclopedic volume on global audience studies, two monographs in Journalism & Communication Monographs, more than 30 articles in leading academic journals (five reprinted as book chapters), and sixteen original book chapters. She is a recipient of the International Communication Association’s Teresa Award for outstanding feminist scholarship and a two-time recipient of the Journalism Department’s Gretchen Kemp Award for outstanding teaching.
