Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Indigo Mudbhary ’26 is an undergraduate concentrating in Ethnic Studies and History. She is interested in how mobility and remoteness are made out to be opposing forces in contemporary Nepal in ways that maintain hierarchies of caste, class, gender, ethnicity, and other identity markers, alongside ideas of nation and nationalism. Her thesis, titled “Unsettling the Remote/Mobile Binary in Nepal,” details how various actors strategically use discourses of remoteness and mobility in contemporary Nepal. The thesis will include four case studies to explore how these narratives appear at different moments, specifically in the context of Indigenous-led missionary work in Nepal, Bollywood films on Everest, nonprofits that work with rural communities, and post-monarchy governmental classifications of remoteness. The methods will include archival research, ethnography, and oral history. Through this work, Mudbhary ultimately hopes to historicize remoteness and demonstrate that it is not inherent to a landscape but rather a specific gaze that emerges from colonial lineages within South Asia, one that many actors, including those who live in these so-called remote landscapes, have manipulated to their own ends. She aims to explore other ways of looking at these environments as well.