This three-day online certificate course delves into these and similar questions to study the multifaceted ways in which mountains spark the human imagination. It aims to introduce a variety of aspects that shape mountain life through experiential, literary, philosophical and visual perspectives. Taking the Western Himalayan terrain as its main area of focus, the course veers through numerous cultural texts from the 19th to the 21st centuries (memoirs, travelogues, paintings, architecture, songs and cinema) to shed light on the diversity of ways that have defined – and continue to define – the relationship between highlands and humanity.

Open for everyone over the age of 18 years to attend, the course will largely take place in the English language. Wherever Hindi or other Himalayan dialects are deployed, translation will be provided. The course will run for two hours every day (six hours in total), which will include opportunities for short exercises and discussion. No prior knowledge of mountain societies or relationship to mountain life is required. A curiosity towards any kind of landscape culture(s) would however lead to a richer engagement with the subject.

Skills Gained:

• An introductory perspective on the relationship between landscape and culture in the context of mountain life.
• An introductory perspective on the relationship between identity and imagination in the domain of mountain cultures, particularly through a focus on media and materiality.
• Diverse insights on treating mountains as both natural and cultural entities at one and the same time.
• An introductory knowledge of the various ways in which cultural texts portray and produce meaning in the context of mountains (from literature to architecture, and music to the visual arts).
• An introductory knowledge of indigenous, colonial and popular culture perspectives towards mountain life in the context of colonial and pre-colonial hill stations (case study: Himachal Pradesh).

Recommended For:

Siddharth Pandey belongs to the Shimla Himalayas of North India, and has a PhD in English and Materiality Studies from the University of Cambridge, UK, where he was based as a Cambridge International and Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar from 2012-19. He is currently a Fellow in Global Humanities at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (‘global dis:connect’), Munich (Germany), where he is researching the Indian Himalayas through the lenses of ecological aesthetics and dwelling perspectives. He has previously held fellowships and grants in global history, art history, colonial history and global travel cultures under the aegis of LMU’s Centre for Global History, Yale Centre for British (YCBA, Yale University), Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (London), and the Charles Wallace India Trust (CWIT, London). Pandey’s research interests included Himalayan Studies, Environmental Humanities, Materiality Studies, Fantasy Literature, Children’s Literature, Nature and Travel Writing, Craft Studies, Folk Studies and Popular Culture. He has taught and tutored several courses on English, Cinema and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Delhi and Cambridge, and he serves as a guest lecturer on the MA in Heritage Conservation Course at UK’s Durham University.