DEFENSE: “All Made-up: The Labor Story of Platform Driven Beauty Work in India”
Anthropology Dissertation Defense
May 6, 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location
BSB 3160
Calendar
Download iCal FileDissertation Defense by UIC Anthropology PhD Student Lakshita Malik
Abstract
Drawing on The Big Fat Indian Wedding as a site of remediated digital labor, an affectively underscored spectacle, and a recoded operation of caste performance, this dissertation reframes our understanding of the how gender and desire within ritual performances of kinship interact within the context of the contemporary hybrid marketplace of images. To this end, this dissertation examines the staging of the Indian bride as a global visual phenomenon, rendered aspirational through circulatory media - like reels, advertisements, TV shows, and film scenes, and the ever shifting forms of the Wedding Album. Arguing that the coded languages and performances that underscore this spectacle are rooted within older conversations on diaspora as temporal relationships to culture, the nation as a gendered phenomenon, and aspiration as a vehicle that collapses caste and class, this dissertation complicates how body, beauty, labor, and skin color are mediated through digital media.
Date posted
May 1, 2026
Date updated
May 1, 2026