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Associate professor Radhika Parameswaran and Kavitha Cardoza’s manuscript, Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Cultural Politics of Skin Lightening in India, has been accepted for publication as a stand-alone monograph in Journalism & Communication Monographs, a journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Kavitha Cardoza, a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a reporter for WAMU public radio in Washington, D.C. Parameswaran, the first author, completed a major portion of the media analysis during her last sabbatical.

The manuscript’s research, which was conducted from 2001 to 2006, includes fieldwork in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore to collect business and marketing data on the skin-lightening cosmetics industry; a historical and contemporary overview of skin color and social identity in India; and a qualitative analysis of 78 print advertisements and 37 commercials.

The authors have presented three papers based on this research at the annual conventions of the International Communication Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Parameswaran has also delivered invited talks on skin color and advertising in India at Ohio University, University of Iowa and the IU Asian Culture Center for Women’s History Month.

Parameswaran said she thanks students Suchitra Mohan and Spring Duvall and graduates Yue Tan and Chelsea Wald for their “outstanding research assistance.”

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