Siddharth Pandey

Last updated
Siddharth Pandey
Siddharth Pandey Cambridge.jpg
Born (1987-07-08) 8 July 1987 (age 36)
Nationality Indian
Education
  • B.A.(Hons) English, Delhi University
  • M.A. English, Delhi University
  • MPhil English, Delhi University
  • MPhil Children's Literature, Cambridge University
  • PhD Literature and Materiality Studies, Cambridge University
Occupation(s)Writer, literary scholar, cultural historian, curator, and photographer
Known for
  • Writings on Indian hill stations
  • Writings on popular culture and cultural aesthetics
  • Writings on fantasy literature
  • Photography of landscapes and architecture
Notable workFossil (2021)

Siddharth Pandey (born 8 July 1987) is a writer, literary scholar, cultural historian, curator, photographer, and musician from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. His writings on Indian hill stations, popular culture, and materiality studies have appeared in academic publications as well as various Indian national-level English newspapers and online news forums. His landscape and architecture photographs have featured in solo and thematic exhibitions in India and the United Kingdom, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum at London. His first book of poetry, Fossil (2021), was a finalist for the Banff Mountain Book Awards in 2022.

Contents

Education

Pandey obtained a BA (Hons), Masters (MA) and MPhil in English Literature from the Delhi University. After that, he obtained an MPhil in Children’s Literature and a PhD in English and Materiality Studies from the University of Cambridge (2019). At Cambridge, he was based at the Homerton College. His doctoral advisor was Maria Nikolajeva. His doctoral thesis, titled Crafting,Conjuring, and the Aesthetic of Making: Towards a Materialistic Understanding of Fantasy, studies the ways in which ‘making’ - in forms such as human craftsmanship and non-human growth - impacts the creation of ‘wonder’ in the worlds of fantasy literature. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Pandey has also pursued a parallel research interest in the evolving cultural and aesthetic politics of Shimla in particular and Himachal Pradesh more generally. [1]

Pandey has been the recipient of several scholarships and fellowships. Among others, these include a Cambridge Commonwealth Shared Scholarship, a Cambridge International Scholarship, Charles Wallace India Trust grants, and a research support grant from the Paul Mellon Centre. [4] [6] [7]

Pandey has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Yale University and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. [8] [9] [2]

Reception of writings

Pandey has researched and written about fantasy and children’s literature, hill stations in India, nature writing, craft theory, folk culture, cinema studies, and pop culture. Pandey's writings have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and academic anthologies. Pandey's writings have also appeared on several South Asian newspapers and mass-media forums. These include The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Pioneer, The Tribune, Frontline, Live Wire, Outlook, Quint, Scroll.in, and The News . [2] [3] [10] [11]

Indian hill stations

Jeffrey A. Auerbach writes of Pandey's essay 'Simla or Shimla: The Indian Political Re-appropriation of Little England' (2014) as a 'postcolonial counter-narrative' to the colonial, predominantly British origins of Shimla as the summer capital of the British Raj. [12] An essay by Pandey on Indian hill stations appears in Between Heaven and Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills (2022), an anthology of eminent historical and contemporary non-fiction writing on Indian hills, selected and edited by Ruskin Bond and Bulbul Sharma. In her book review of this anthology in The Tribune, Sarika Sharma comments: "Siddharth Pandey’s essay is a refreshing take on the femininity of hill stations in a country brimming with toxic masculinity." [13]

Fantasy literature

Commenting on Pandey's work in fantasy literature, Simone Kotva of the University of Cambridge writes: "Siddharth’s work looks at the representation of magic in fantasy and speculative fiction. His work upends the clichéd understanding of magic as escapist, free-form and otherworldly and demonstrates instead its close relationship to artistic making, landscape and attentiveness to material becoming." [3] The Indian naturalist and educator Yuvan Aves extends Pandey's arguments about the non-centralised, dispersed nature of magic in imagined magical worlds (in modern western fantasy literature) to his own understanding of the natural world, wherein he regards 'the ocean and the living earth' as intrinsically a magical place, where 'everything lives, everything speaks'. [14]

Aesthetics

Several of Pandey's writings in mass media have been about the aesthetics of nature, cinema, everyday culture, and craft. Felix Ehlers of the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, writes that Pandey's work enables one to see beauty and aesthetics as an alternative, creative approach to mediation in the Anthropocene, rather than the stereotypically dystopian views around this age. As a Fellow of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre on Global Dis:connect in Munich (2022-23), Pandey organised a two-day workshop on the theme 'Ecology, aesthetics and everyday cultures of modernity' in July 2023. [15]

Poetry

Pandey's book Fossil (2021), his geo-mythological-poetic exploration of the Himalayas, was a finalist in the 'Mountain Fiction and Poetry' category at the Banff Mountain Book Festival of Canada in 2022. [16] Banff mountain book awards are considered major recognitions for mountain literature in all forms from across the world. [17] [18] Fossil also features in the essay 'Otters for Books for Children and Families' by the British artist Jackie Morris on her website. [19]

Photographic exhibitions

Pandey is primarily known as a photographer of built and natural landscapes. He has had a longstanding interest in the colonial-era built heritage of Shimla and its interaction with the surrounding natural landscape, as well as in old kinds of Indian and European architectures. [20] [21] [22]

Music

Pandey is a pianist, and has composed pieces inspired by Himalayan and Celtic influences. [28]

Bibliography

Academic publications

Poetry

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shimla</span> Capital of Himachal Pradesh, India

Shimla is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, the city became the capital of East Punjab and was later made the capital city of Himachal Pradesh. It is the principal commercial, cultural and educational centre of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruskin Bond</span> Indian novelist and short story writer (born 1934)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hill station</span> Town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley

A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The English term was originally used mostly in colonial Asia, but also in Africa, for towns founded by European colonialists as refuges from the summer heat and, as Dale Kennedy observes about the Indian context, "the hill station (...) was seen as an exclusive British preserve: here it was possible to render the Indian into an outsider". The term is still used in present day, particularly in India, which has the largest number of hill stations, most are situated at an altitude of approximately 1,000 to 2,500 metres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian Institute of Advanced Study</span> Research institute in Shimla, India

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS) is a research institute located in Shimla, India. It was set up by the Ministry of Education, Government of India in 1964 and started functioning from 20 October 1965. It is currently housed in the Rashtrapati Niwas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalka–Shimla Railway</span> Heritage rail line in North India

The Kalka–Shimla Railway is a 2 ft 6 in narrow-gauge railway in North India which traverses a mostly mountainous route from Kalka to Shimla. It is known for dramatic views of the hills and surrounding villages. The railway was built under the direction of Herbert Septimus Harington between 1898 and 1903 to connect Shimla, the summer capital of India during the British Raj, with the rest of the Indian rail system.

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References

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