Meenakshi Gigi Durham
Biographic Data
| ID | 389499 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meenakshi Gigi Durham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meenakshi Gigi |
| FAMILY NAME | Durham |
| SIGNATURE | DURHAM M G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Iowa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7248-4572 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 148 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Decolonizing bodies and the ethics of care
In the contemporary moment, systemic failures – from climate change to pandemics to political repression – have created embodied vulnerabilities worldwide. I argue here that the increasing precaritization of individual bodies is an index of the political formations that create and condition vulnerabilities among certain populations. Recognizing this, analyses of the conditions of embodied vulnerability are crucial to cultural studies in that they…
On the Ethics of Mediating Embodied Vulnerability to Violence
Media ethics has long been haunted by the question of representing human beings' vulnerability to violence. While journalism and photojournalism have an obligation to report on the realities of violence and suffering in the world, the "spectacle of suffering" is fraught with ethical dilemmas. In this essay, I seek to theorize the ethics of vulnerability to violence in media representation. As a starting point, I argue for the politics of embodime…
Subaltern voices and postcolonial schizophrenia
Banned from the U.S. during the “war on terror,” the British/Sri Lankan hip-hop artist M.I.A. responded by recording her 2007 album Kala in multiple locations throughout the global South, collating indigenous musical styles and unorthodox recording techniques. Via a critical/cultural analysis, this paper explores M.I.A.’s work on Kala as subaltern resistance mobilized by “differential movement,” particularly in its mode of production, which opera…
Children, the media, and the epistemic imperative of embodied vulnerability
The world over, very young children are navigating the hazards of war, criminal activity, terrorism, torture, natural disasters, disease, hunger, and poverty. In media studies, the trends of the past decade or so have focused on children’s agency and empowerment—but many scholars of children tend to elide embodiment in their epistemological approaches. I argue in this essay that children inhabit what Ulrich Beck termed a “risk society”, and that …
Scene of the Crime
The brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus became a media spectacle, flooding the news stream worldwide with articles, commentaries, blogs, and images. Drawing on theoretical insights from transnational feminism and social geography, this analysis focuses on the mediated deployment of space and place as potent signifiers of gender and sexuality in news coverage of the event. Using feminist critical discourse analysis to i…
The Audience in the Graduate Curriculum
Because media audiences are changing as technologies and populations change, ethnographic approaches offer nuanced and versatile ways of understanding the complex interactions between people and media. Although a quarter‐century ago cultural theorists like Richard Johnson and Stuart Hall drew attention to the linkages among production, texts, and audiences, a great deal of research – especially student research – tends to center on texts. But tex…
Blood, lust and love
This paper interrogates the construction of gender relations in the Twilight books and films, vis-à-vis issues of implicit and overt gender violence. A combination of ideological analysis, semiology, and feminist critique is used to examine the verbal and visual codes at work in these texts. Five dominant themes emerge: (1) the representation of violence as an inherent characteristic of masculinity; (2) the portrayal of male violence as a justifi…
Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town”
In March 2011, The New York Times reported the serial gang rape of a schoolgirl in the small town of Cleveland, Texas. Responses to the story were swift and damning: bloggers and commentators quickly identified the patriarchal and victim-blaming aspects of The Times' coverage, resulting in an influential petition and an apology from The Times. This study employs critical textual analysis to interrogate the critical responses to The Times story. T…
Body Matters
We understand the world today as mediated, technologized, globalized, and networked and, as a consequence, we tend to think of people in terms of avatars and virtual identities. In media studies, w
Constructing the “new ethnicities”
This paper posits that adolescence, as experienced by girls of immigrant diaspora groups, is complicated by issues of race, culture and nation that intersect with discourses of sex and gender. In terms of globalization theory, sexuality is conceptualized as a locus of cultural hybridization; media representations of sexuality often mark the global/local nexus for diaspora peoples. In this study, a series of in‐depth interviews were conducted with…
The mismeasure of masculinity
The athletic male body has long been idealized in western culture, and its dimensions are a key aspect of its iconic status. Oates and Durham examine the discourses of the athletic male body as it is presented in media discourses surrounding the NFL Draft. They focus specifically on the enumerative strategies used to define and delimit the racialized bodies of football draftees. Through a close textual analysis of publications that deal with the …
The Girling of America
The upsurge in media vehicles aimed at adolescent girl audiences has given birth to a "new breed" of teenage heroine, one whose embodiment of nontraditional gender roles has drawn widespread acclaim. This essay offers critical perspectives on this new genre, situating the figures of the new girl heroines in their sociopolitical contexts and examining them through the lens of critical feminist theory. The essay concludes that the oppositional gest…
Displaced persons
Journal Article Displaced Persons: Symbols of South Asian Femininity and the Returned Gaze in U.S. Media Culture Get access Meenakshi Gigi Durham Meenakshi Gigi Durham 1School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 May 2001, Pages 201–217, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2001.tb00239.x Published: 10 January 20…
Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks
Articulating Adolescent Girls' Resistance to Patriarchal Discourse in Popular Media
This paper explores and theorizes the experiences in adolescent girls' lives that pertain to their ability to resist damaging media representations of femininity. Traditional theoretical approaches to resistance involve notions of "resistant reading" of media messages. In this paper, I move beyond the individualized concept of resistant readings of media messages to a theory of resistance related to collective feminist activism, in the context of…
On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism
Journal Article On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism: The Case for "Strong Objectivity" Get access Meenakshi Gigi Durham Meenakshi Gigi Durham 1Meenakshi Gigi Durham is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include feminist critiques of mass media, representations of gender, race, and class in media, and critical theory. Search for o…
Dilemmas of Desire
This article interrogates gendered ideologies of sexuality in two teen magazines, Seventeen and YM. The method of analysis involves a close reading of written texts and images relating to sex or sexuality. The patterns that emerge from this analysis reveal tensions that center around sexual decision making versus sexual signification via costuming, cosmetics, and body image. The analysis uncovers a representation of sexuality that parallels socio…
The Taming of the Shrew
On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism
Journal Article On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism: The Case for "Strong Objectivity" Get access Meenakshi Gigi Durham Meenakshi Gigi Durham 1Meenakshi Gigi Durham is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include feminist critiques of mass media, representations of gender, race, and class in media, and critical theory. Search for o…
The mismeasure of masculinity
The athletic male body has long been idealized in western culture, and its dimensions are a key aspect of its iconic status. Oates and Durham examine the discourses of the athletic male body as it is presented in media discourses surrounding the NFL Draft. They focus specifically on the enumerative strategies used to define and delimit the racialized bodies of football draftees. Through a close textual analysis of publications that deal with the …
Scene of the Crime
The brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus became a media spectacle, flooding the news stream worldwide with articles, commentaries, blogs, and images. Drawing on theoretical insights from transnational feminism and social geography, this analysis focuses on the mediated deployment of space and place as potent signifiers of gender and sexuality in news coverage of the event. Using feminist critical discourse analysis to i…
Dilemmas of Desire
This article interrogates gendered ideologies of sexuality in two teen magazines, Seventeen and YM. The method of analysis involves a close reading of written texts and images relating to sex or sexuality. The patterns that emerge from this analysis reveal tensions that center around sexual decision making versus sexual signification via costuming, cosmetics, and body image. The analysis uncovers a representation of sexuality that parallels socio…
The Taming of the Shrew
Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town”
In March 2011, The New York Times reported the serial gang rape of a schoolgirl in the small town of Cleveland, Texas. Responses to the story were swift and damning: bloggers and commentators quickly identified the patriarchal and victim-blaming aspects of The Times' coverage, resulting in an influential petition and an apology from The Times. This study employs critical textual analysis to interrogate the critical responses to The Times story. T…
Displaced persons
Journal Article Displaced Persons: Symbols of South Asian Femininity and the Returned Gaze in U.S. Media Culture Get access Meenakshi Gigi Durham Meenakshi Gigi Durham 1School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 May 2001, Pages 201–217, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2001.tb00239.x Published: 10 January 20…
Articulating Adolescent Girls' Resistance to Patriarchal Discourse in Popular Media
This paper explores and theorizes the experiences in adolescent girls' lives that pertain to their ability to resist damaging media representations of femininity. Traditional theoretical approaches to resistance involve notions of "resistant reading" of media messages. In this paper, I move beyond the individualized concept of resistant readings of media messages to a theory of resistance related to collective feminist activism, in the context of…
Decolonizing bodies and the ethics of care
In the contemporary moment, systemic failures – from climate change to pandemics to political repression – have created embodied vulnerabilities worldwide. I argue here that the increasing precaritization of individual bodies is an index of the political formations that create and condition vulnerabilities among certain populations. Recognizing this, analyses of the conditions of embodied vulnerability are crucial to cultural studies in that they…
Subaltern voices and postcolonial schizophrenia
Banned from the U.S. during the “war on terror,” the British/Sri Lankan hip-hop artist M.I.A. responded by recording her 2007 album Kala in multiple locations throughout the global South, collating indigenous musical styles and unorthodox recording techniques. Via a critical/cultural analysis, this paper explores M.I.A.’s work on Kala as subaltern resistance mobilized by “differential movement,” particularly in its mode of production, which opera…
Body Matters
We understand the world today as mediated, technologized, globalized, and networked and, as a consequence, we tend to think of people in terms of avatars and virtual identities. In media studies, w
The Girling of America
The upsurge in media vehicles aimed at adolescent girl audiences has given birth to a "new breed" of teenage heroine, one whose embodiment of nontraditional gender roles has drawn widespread acclaim. This essay offers critical perspectives on this new genre, situating the figures of the new girl heroines in their sociopolitical contexts and examining them through the lens of critical feminist theory. The essay concludes that the oppositional gest…
The Taming of the Shrew
On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism
Journal Article On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism: The Case for "Strong Objectivity" Get access Meenakshi Gigi Durham Meenakshi Gigi Durham 1Meenakshi Gigi Durham is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include feminist critiques of mass media, representations of gender, race, and class in media, and critical theory. Search for o…
Dilemmas of Desire
This article interrogates gendered ideologies of sexuality in two teen magazines, Seventeen and YM. The method of analysis involves a close reading of written texts and images relating to sex or sexuality. The patterns that emerge from this analysis reveal tensions that center around sexual decision making versus sexual signification via costuming, cosmetics, and body image. The analysis uncovers a representation of sexuality that parallels socio…
Articulating Adolescent Girls' Resistance to Patriarchal Discourse in Popular Media
This paper explores and theorizes the experiences in adolescent girls' lives that pertain to their ability to resist damaging media representations of femininity. Traditional theoretical approaches to resistance involve notions of "resistant reading" of media messages. In this paper, I move beyond the individualized concept of resistant readings of media messages to a theory of resistance related to collective feminist activism, in the context of…
Displaced persons
Journal Article Displaced Persons: Symbols of South Asian Femininity and the Returned Gaze in U.S. Media Culture Get access Meenakshi Gigi Durham Meenakshi Gigi Durham 1School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 May 2001, Pages 201–217, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2001.tb00239.x Published: 10 January 20…
Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks
The Girling of America
The upsurge in media vehicles aimed at adolescent girl audiences has given birth to a "new breed" of teenage heroine, one whose embodiment of nontraditional gender roles has drawn widespread acclaim. This essay offers critical perspectives on this new genre, situating the figures of the new girl heroines in their sociopolitical contexts and examining them through the lens of critical feminist theory. The essay concludes that the oppositional gest…
Constructing the “new ethnicities”
This paper posits that adolescence, as experienced by girls of immigrant diaspora groups, is complicated by issues of race, culture and nation that intersect with discourses of sex and gender. In terms of globalization theory, sexuality is conceptualized as a locus of cultural hybridization; media representations of sexuality often mark the global/local nexus for diaspora peoples. In this study, a series of in‐depth interviews were conducted with…
The mismeasure of masculinity
The athletic male body has long been idealized in western culture, and its dimensions are a key aspect of its iconic status. Oates and Durham examine the discourses of the athletic male body as it is presented in media discourses surrounding the NFL Draft. They focus specifically on the enumerative strategies used to define and delimit the racialized bodies of football draftees. Through a close textual analysis of publications that deal with the …
Body Matters
We understand the world today as mediated, technologized, globalized, and networked and, as a consequence, we tend to think of people in terms of avatars and virtual identities. In media studies, w
The Audience in the Graduate Curriculum
Because media audiences are changing as technologies and populations change, ethnographic approaches offer nuanced and versatile ways of understanding the complex interactions between people and media. Although a quarter‐century ago cultural theorists like Richard Johnson and Stuart Hall drew attention to the linkages among production, texts, and audiences, a great deal of research – especially student research – tends to center on texts. But tex…
Blood, lust and love
This paper interrogates the construction of gender relations in the Twilight books and films, vis-à-vis issues of implicit and overt gender violence. A combination of ideological analysis, semiology, and feminist critique is used to examine the verbal and visual codes at work in these texts. Five dominant themes emerge: (1) the representation of violence as an inherent characteristic of masculinity; (2) the portrayal of male violence as a justifi…
Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town”
In March 2011, The New York Times reported the serial gang rape of a schoolgirl in the small town of Cleveland, Texas. Responses to the story were swift and damning: bloggers and commentators quickly identified the patriarchal and victim-blaming aspects of The Times' coverage, resulting in an influential petition and an apology from The Times. This study employs critical textual analysis to interrogate the critical responses to The Times story. T…
Scene of the Crime
The brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on a New Delhi bus became a media spectacle, flooding the news stream worldwide with articles, commentaries, blogs, and images. Drawing on theoretical insights from transnational feminism and social geography, this analysis focuses on the mediated deployment of space and place as potent signifiers of gender and sexuality in news coverage of the event. Using feminist critical discourse analysis to i…
Children, the media, and the epistemic imperative of embodied vulnerability
The world over, very young children are navigating the hazards of war, criminal activity, terrorism, torture, natural disasters, disease, hunger, and poverty. In media studies, the trends of the past decade or so have focused on children’s agency and empowerment—but many scholars of children tend to elide embodiment in their epistemological approaches. I argue in this essay that children inhabit what Ulrich Beck termed a “risk society”, and that …
Subaltern voices and postcolonial schizophrenia
Banned from the U.S. during the “war on terror,” the British/Sri Lankan hip-hop artist M.I.A. responded by recording her 2007 album Kala in multiple locations throughout the global South, collating indigenous musical styles and unorthodox recording techniques. Via a critical/cultural analysis, this paper explores M.I.A.’s work on Kala as subaltern resistance mobilized by “differential movement,” particularly in its mode of production, which opera…
Decolonizing bodies and the ethics of care
In the contemporary moment, systemic failures – from climate change to pandemics to political repression – have created embodied vulnerabilities worldwide. I argue here that the increasing precaritization of individual bodies is an index of the political formations that create and condition vulnerabilities among certain populations. Recognizing this, analyses of the conditions of embodied vulnerability are crucial to cultural studies in that they…
On the Ethics of Mediating Embodied Vulnerability to Violence
Media ethics has long been haunted by the question of representing human beings' vulnerability to violence. While journalism and photojournalism have an obligation to report on the realities of violence and suffering in the world, the "spectacle of suffering" is fraught with ethical dilemmas. In this essay, I seek to theorize the ethics of vulnerability to violence in media representation. As a starting point, I argue for the politics of embodime…
Sociology (16 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Media studies (9 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art (6 works)