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Ambar Basu
Assistant Professor

Ambar Basu

Health Communication, Culture, Postcolonial & Subaltern Studies

Office: CIS 3032
Phone: 813/974-2145
Email:

Dr. Basu joined the faculty in August 2008. His research focuses on health communication, culture, and marginalization. Specifically, Dr. Basu’s research positions culture and health communication within the transformational politics of broader theoretical and methodological frameworks such as postcolonial and subaltern studies and critical ethnography. His recent and ongoing projects look at HIV/AIDS communication practices in sex worker communities and among minority men who have sex with men.

Undergraduate Course Offerings

  • Health Communication
  • Small Group Communication
  • Global Issues in Health Communication
  • Intercultural Communication

Graduate Course Offerings

  • Cultural Perspectives on Health Communication
  • Globalization, Culture, and Communication
  • Qualitative Methods
  • Qualitative Interviewing

Representative Publications

  • Dutta, M., & Basu, A. (in press). Negotiating our postcolonial selves: From the ground to the ivory tower. In Holman-Jones, S., Adams, T., & Ellis, C. E. (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography. Left Coast Press.

  • Dillon, P. J. & Basu. A. (in press). HIV/AIDS and minority men who have sex with men: A qualitative meta-ethnography. Health Communication.  

  • Basu, A. (2011). HIV/AIDS and subaltern autonomous rationality: A call to re-center health communication in marginalized sex worker spaces. Communication Monographs, 78(3), 391-408.

  • Basu, A., & Dutta, M. (2011). ‘We are mothers first’: Localocentric articulation of sex worker identity as a keyword in HIV/AIDS communication. Women & Health, 51(2), 106-123.

  • Dutta, M., & Basu, A. (2011). Culture, communication and health: A guiding framework. In T. Thompson, R. Parrott, & J. F. Nussbaum (Eds.) Routledge handbook of health communication (2nd ed). New York: Routledge.

  • Basu, A. (2010). Communicating health as an impossibility: Sex work, HIV/AIDS, and the dance of hope and hopelessness. Southern Communication Journal, 75(4), 413 – 432.

  • Basu, A., & Dutta, M. (2010). Born into Brothels: Neocolonial moves and unheard voices. Feminist Media Studies 10(1), 101-105.

  • Basu, A., & Dutta, M. (2009). Sex workers and HIV/AIDS: Analyzing participatory culture-centered health communication strategies. Human Communication Research, 35, 86-114.

  • Basu, A., & Wang, J (2009). Branding as a health campaign marketing strategy: The why and how. Journal of Communication Management, 13(1), 77-91

Honors and Awards

  • Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award for 2011 from the Southern States Communication Association.

  • Provost’s Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Awards. University of South Florida, 2010.

Education

Ph.D., Department of Communication, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, 2008
M.Sc., Economics, Calcutta University (India), 1995
B.Sc., Economics (Honors), Mathematics, Political Science, 1993.

Current Courses

RefCourseSecCourse TitleCRDayTimeLocation
50832COM 4022001Health Communication
3MWF
11:00am-1:20pm

CPR 247
55444SPC 6903008Directed Readings
1-4


TBA TBA
52197SPC 6971001Thesis: Master's
6


TBA 100
57524SPC 7980003Dissertation: Doctoral
2-19


TBA 100

Research

Health communication, culture, and marginalization: My research explores the intersection of culture, structure, marginalization and health communication. It locates culture as organic and fundamental in the framing of communicative patterns; and it examines how meanings are shared and health discourse is negotiated in the context of multiple cultural, political, economic, and development agendas in marginalized spaces. One of my most recent projects explores how commercial sex workers make sense of their marginalized living contexts and formulate communication strategies to address locally-articulated structural needs related to health and HIV/AIDS.

I am currently gathering data for a funded project that aims to document and analyze health and HIV/AIDS narratives that emerge from conversations with men who have sex with men. The project is based in Tampa, Florida.

Reflexivity as methodology: Embedded within and embracing the indices of ethnography, autoethnography and postcolonial studies, my research traverses the indeterminacies and vulnerabilities that come with questioning my self, my politics, and my privilege in the processes I adopt to co-create knowledge in marginalized cultures. Reflecting on and deconstructing the lens(es) I use to engage in knowledge creation are core methodological concepts I study even as they shape the “method” of my work.

Graduate Students

Patrick Dillon, Elizabeth Jeter, Huikyong Pang, Magdaline Southard