Siddharth Pandey

Siddharth Pandey (born 8 July 1987) is a writer, cultural historian, curator, and photographer 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.

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 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] 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][5][6]

Pandey has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Yale University and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.[7][8][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 Indian mass-media forums, including The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Pioneer, Live Wire, Outlook, Quint, and Scroll.in.[2][3][9][10]

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.[11] 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."[12]

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]

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.[13] Banff mountain book awards are considered major recognitions for mountain literature in all forms from across the world.[14][15] Fossil also features in the essay 'Otters for Books for Children and Families' by the British artist Jackie Morris on her website.[16]

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 British architecture.[17][18][19]

  • In May 2013, Pandey held his first photographic exhibition at the University of Cambridge.[20][21]
  • In October 2013, the Gaiety Theatre, Shimla, hosted a four-day solo exhibition by Pandey, titled 'Landscapes of Imagination: A Photographic Display of British Spaces'.[20]
  • In June 2014, the Gaiety Theatre, Shimla, hosted a solo exhibition by Pandey, titled 'In the Image of the Other: Visualising Shimla'.[18]
  • In 2016, while pursuing his PhD at Cambridge, Pandey was invited to host a six-month exhibition at the Oriental Museum, Durham University.[22] This exhibition took place over 14 October 2016 - 30 March 2017, and was titled 'In the Image of the Other: Visualising a British-Himalayan Town, Shimla'.[19][1]
  • In 2016, Pandey was alongside commissioned as an official photographer by the Victoria and Albert Museum at London to document 'colonial India’s crafted materiality' for an exhibition on John Lockwood Kipling planned for 2017.[22] This exhibition, which took place over 14 January - 2 April 2017 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, featured Pandey's photographs of the buildings designed by Kipling in Mumbai, among others.[23][1]

Bibliography

Academic publications
  • Pandey, Siddharth. "Interrogating Masculinity through the Child Figure in Bombay Cinema." Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network 4, no. 1 (2011).
  • Pandey, Siddharth. "Simla or Shimla: The Indian political re-appropriation of Little England 1." In Consuming Architecture, pp. 133–153. Routledge, 2014.
  • Pandey, Siddharth. "Framing Simla: The Queen of Hill Stations and the Politics of Iconography". In Visual Histories of South Asia, pp.. Primus Books, 2018.
  • Pandey, Siddharth. "Crafting, Conjuring, and the Aesthetic of Making: Towards a Materialistic Understanding of Fantasy." PhD diss., 2019.
  • Pandey, Siddharth. "Emplacing Tasks of Magic: Hand, Land, and the Generation of Fantasy Taskscape in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching Series." GeoHumanities 6, no. 1 (2020): 39-50.
  • Pandey, Siddharth. "" Handling" Wonder: Tools, Tasks, and the Enchantment of Materialistic Engagement in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy." The Lion and the Unicorn 46, no. 2 (2022): 224-243.

Poetry
  • Pandey, Siddharth. Fossil. A Published Event, 2021.

References
  1. "Siddarth Pandey - gloknos". Siddarth Pandey - gloknos. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  2. Käte Hamburger Research Centre, LMU, Munich (2022-09-20). "Siddharth Pandey joins global dis:connect". global dis:connect. Retrieved 2023-08-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. Kotva, Simone (December 8, 2020). "'Magic and Ecology' Podcast episode 1: Siddharth Pandey". magicecology.crassh.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  4. "Siddharth Pandey | Scholar Spotlights | Scholars". www.cambridgetrust.org. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  5. "Siddharth's story". Charles Wallace India Trust. 2020-10-16. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  6. "Grants and Fellowships Awarded - Autumn 2020". paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk. 2020.
  7. "Visiting Fellows" (PDF). britishart.yale.edu. 2019–2020.
  8. "Siddharth Pandey - Munich Centre for Global History - LMU Munich". www.globalhist.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  9. "Now is when you mutilate a massif by Siddharth Pandey". whenisnow.org. 2021-12-01. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  10. "Siddharth's story". Charles Wallace India Trust. 2020-10-16. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  11. Auerbach, Jeffrey A. (2018). Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 170 and 240. ISBN 978-0-19-256231-9.
  12. Sharma, Sarika (August 28, 2022). "'Between Heaven and Earth: Of hills and hill stations". The Tribune.
  13. Smart, Dave (2022-09-15). "Banff Mountain Book Competition Categories announced, climbing book lovers take note". Gripped Magazine. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  14. Qiao, Vicky (October 20, 2021). "Canadian writers Suzanne Simard, Jessica J. Lee among Banff Mountain Book Award winners". cbc.ca.
  15. McLemore, Andrew (2022-10-21). "2022 Banff Mountain Book Award Winners Announced » Explorersweb". Explorersweb. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  16. Morris, Jackie (October 31, 2021). "Otters for Books for Children and Families". Jackie Morris Artist. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  17. Sharma, Ashima (September 2014). "Exquisite Photographic Visionist: Siddharth Pandey | Keekli". Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  18. Joshi, Shriniwas (June 23, 2014). "Siddharth Pande clicks to motivate people". The Tribune.
  19. "Durham University: What's On (October 2016 to March 2017)". 2016.
  20. "Exhibition of photographs of British landscapes, architecture". The Tribune. October 16, 2013.
  21. "Siddharth Pandey | Scholar Spotlights | Scholars". www.cambridgetrust.org. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  22. "PhD Student's photography commissioned by Victoria and Albert". www.educ.cam.ac.uk. July 25, 2016. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  23. "The crafty imperialist". Apollo Magazine. 2017-01-07. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
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