Rethinking Mountaineering Histories: Amrita Dhar

“We need to acknowledge mountaineering as a profoundly social pursuit…. I strongly resist the idea that there is a kind of objective kind of excellence in mountaineering. The road to mountaineering achievement is not level. We need to understand where someone is starting from if we really want to understand what the road to the summit for them is like.” Literature professor and mountaineering scholar Amrita Dhar grew up in West Bengal. As a child, she vacationed in the Himalayan mountains with her family, and she has since spent a lot of time traveling through and thinking about mountains and the narratives that emerge from them. In this episode, Dhar talks with managing editor Paula Wright about how addressing some of the gaps in mountaineering history might also lead to reconceptualizing the pursuit of mountaineering itself.