Heidi Pauwels

Professor

South Asian Program Coordinator

Contact Information

hpauwels@uw.edu

206-543-4235

GWN 233

Office Hours

No office hours SU24

Fields of Interest

Classical and modern Hindi language and literature Hindi Hinduism Literature and Other Arts Religion Sanskrit Sanskrit language and literature South Asian

Biography

Ph.D. Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, 1994

M.A. Eastern Philology and History: Indo-Iranistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, 1986

B.A. Eastern Philology and History: Indo-Iranistics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, 1983

Curriculum Vitae (254.19 KB)

Current Research Projects:

Edition and translation of selected works by Nagridas, alias Savant Singh of Kishangarh (1699-1764) and his concubine Rasik Bihari alias Bani Thani ("the Indian Mona Lisa"). Confluence of classical Hindi devotional and Indo-Persian and Rajasthani court idiom (sponsored by a NEH and Guggenheim Fellowship).
Revisiting the birth of Urdu: the reception of "the father of Urdu," Vali, in eighteenth-century Delhi salons, an interdisciplinary project with Purnima Dhavan (History, UW) (sponsored by an NEH Collaborative grant).
An edited volume on Vernaculars, Memory construction and Emotion: Giant Jinas and Warrior Epics in Gwalior together with Eva De Clercq (Gent University, Belgium).

Awards and Honors

Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2011–2012)

National Endowment for the Humanities 9-month Fellowship for The Voice of India’s Mona Lisa (2020)

National Endowment for the Humanities collaborative grant with Purnima Dhavan for Urdu’s Origins Revisited: Vali Dakhani’s Reception in Multilingual South Asia (2023–24)