Nivedita Nath

I am a PhD Candidate in History at UCLA, with a broad interest in the political possibilities that the study of history has for reimagining the places of our collective futures. My proposed dissertation is entitled Race, Caste and Modern Imaginaries of the Himalayas: Ecology and Phenomenology in Colonial Kumaun and Garhwal. Tracing the trajectory of imaginaries of the Himalayas as an ideal site for pilgramage and asceticism, I argue that the encounter between high Hindu ‘traditions’ and colonial epistemologies transformed conceptual and phenomenological constructions of the ‘Himalayas’, thereby reinforcing hierarchies of race and caste.