Purnima Mankekar

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Purnima Mankekar’s teaching interests range from anthropological perspectives on mass media to feminist theory and ethnography to transnational cultural studies. An assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University, Mankekar has conducted much anthropological fieldwork in cities such as Goa, New Delhi, and Bombay. Her recently completed book, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics (Duke University, 2001), focuses on television, nationalism, and gender in postcolonial India.

During her fellowship year, Mankekar will pursue an ethnographic study of the cultural consequences of globalization using the lens of women's participation in transnational public cultures. She will focus on women in two areas of transnational circuit of images, information, and culture: New Delhi and the San Francisco Bay area. Her goal is to understand the role of transnational public culture in the formation of women’s communities and identities across national spaces.

Lauded for her work in the field, Mankekar has received a South Asia Initiative Award. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Washington, Seattle.