Organizer: Marcel Cobussen √ (Leiden University, Netherlands) Urban atmospheres are of course experienced through more than one sense: we use our eyes, ears, skin, and nose. Besides elements that can be experienced through the senses, many other agents are active in creating a specific atmosphere: cultural perspectives, sociopolitical and economic influences, ecological or commercial interests, etc. In short, all these agents (and many more) play a role in the ways place...

Karis Jade Petty √ (Anthropology, University of Sussex, Brighton)Landscapes made Visible: Seeing in the Mind’s Eye for the Non-congenitally Sight ImpairedEven when there is no vision through the anatomical eyes, people who are non-congenitally sight impaired often describe “visual” experiences of the landscape through “seeing in the mind’s eye”. This imaginative sight is a ‘way of seeing’ through eyes of another time and can be understood as a ‘phantom vision’. Intentiona...

Organizer: Jarkko Toikkanen √ (English, University of Oulu, Finland)Our joint panel of two 90-minute sessions with three papers each explores how technological designs both old and new enable sensory access in professional and artistic contexts. We represent a variety of backgrounds across language, literature, and media studies to demonstrate and argue for new ways of putting into practice theoretical and methodological solutions regarding critical disability studies on the senses

Organizer: Simon Hajdini ∆ (Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)The panel “Ecologies of Enjoyment: Psychoanalysis and the Environment” takes its cue from the concept of “extimacy” first proposed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan with the goal of sketching out its salience for psychoanalytic ecology. The structure implied in the notion of extimacy signals that the duality of system—environment eludes the polarity between interiority and exteriority, the inside and t...

Organizer: Florian Grond (Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University, Canada)This roundtable brings together artists Bouchard, Bucionis, Johnson, and Hunt, each working across different sensory modalities, to challenge conventional assumptions about perception and imagination. By exploring how imagination emerges through diverse sensory experiences—starting with but extending beyond the dominance of visual perception—this discussion offers new perspectives on communication, crea...

Brian Glenney ∆ (Philosophy, Norwich University, UK)Animal Senses in the AnthropoceneThe mass of human-made things now exceeds the mass of natural things, a sign of our new Anthropocene age. This has introduced an array of sensory changes in animals’ perception of their natural climes. Human made structures now disrupt numerous animals’ flying behaviors, adding to the already disruptive human made light sources. Underwater boat motor sounds and radar pings interfere with ...

Silvina Katz (Open University, UK)Sensing to Translate: A Reading of Silvina Ocampo’s Short Story “La Calle Sarandi”Literary translators need to be able to sense or ‘feel’ a text in order to generate an emotionally resonant target text in translation, however, the ineffable nature of atmospheres in short stories can make this task difficult. This study explores the complex process of identifying sensory cues in literary works, focusing on Silvina Ocampo’s unsettling short...

Anna Young ∆ (Communication & Culture, York University, UK)The Pain Scarf: A Tactile AutopathographyThe presentation will fall within the medicine and the senses theme. Part of my dissertation will include an autoethnographic exploration of my tonsillectomy operation scheduled for November 2024. I am inspired by such ‘autopathographies’ (accounts of one’s own illness) as Lochlann Jain’s "Malignant" to document the process of the operation and recovery, while supplemen...

Phoebe Myers (English, CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)Beyond Domination? Sensory Dissonances and Public Art’s Role in Restoring Nature’s VoiceTheodor Adorno advocated for art to be a mechanism to give voice back to nature in his book Aesthetics. This voice had been stripped from nature through the domination of industrial capitalism, and Adorno believed recovering this voice to be crucial in resolving humanity’s estrangement from nature. Adorno, however, did not think an...

Organizers: Nina Morris ∆ (School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and Kate McLean-MacKenzie ∆ (University of Kent, UK)Plenary Participant Discussion: ‘Smell of Morning’What does the early morning smell like outdoors in the city? Is Montreal different from other locations around the world? Why does this time of day smell the way it does? How does it make us feel? In this plenary session, we will use a range of methods to interrogate and discuss ‘the smell o...

Organizer: David Howes ∆ Polina Dimova ∆; Jeremy Stolow ∆; John Lee Clark ∆; Lida Zeitlin-Wu ∆This “meet the author” roundtable has a unique format. Instead of presenting their own work, each author will offer an appreciation of the work of the author with whom they are paired. The first pair consists of Jeremy Stolow commenting on Polina Dimova’s At the Crossroads of the Senses: the Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism, followed by ...

Organizer: Rennie Tang ∆ (California State Polytechnic University Pomona, USA) • Eleni-Ira Panourgia ∆ (Gustave Eiffel University, France);• Lisa Sandlos ∆ (Brock University, Canada)• Jackie Martin ∆ (Biodiversity Coordinator, Office of Sustainability, Concordia University, Canada)• Rebecca Tittler ∆ (Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability, Concordia University, Canada)• Maya Lach-Aidelbaum ∆ (Communication Studies, Concordia University, Canada)• Li...

Elizabeth Davis ∆ (Sociology and Anthropology / Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Canada; Department of Social Justice Education, OISE/University of Toronto, Canada) “I know it when I see it”: Liberalism Sensing the ObsceneContrary to US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous evaluation of pornography as something that the good judge knows when he sees, this paper traces how obscenity and pornography have never been quite so easily discerned. I...

Organizer: Jarkko Toikkanen (English, University of Oulu, Finland) Juha-Pekka Alarauhio (University of Oulu, Finland)The Blind Bard at Work: Senses, Human Technologies, and Paradise Lost in John Milton’s Artistic ProductionSince Homer, famously known as “the blind man who dwells in rugged Chios,” (Thucydides), the theme of visual impairment has been central to narratives about poets and their creative abilities. This image of the blind bard, reinforcing...

Organizer: Melissa Park (School of Physical and Occupational Therapy / Culture Mental Health Research Unit, Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, Canada)This round table brings together emerging scholars and expert discussants in the fields of sensory ethnography and 1st person, experience-near critical phenomenological frameworks in anthropology to discuss the affordances and limitations of immersive technology/techniques for understanding “inter” experiences. Drawin...

Peter Sebastian Chesney (History of Art & Architecture, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA)Burning Rich, Burning Lean: Expertise and the Smell of Automobile ExhaustThis paper offers a comparative history of two 20th-Century global cities: Los Angeles and Berlin. L.A. acquired a reputation for its "smog" after World War Two. Rich with unburned carbon fumes from the exhaust pipes of automobiles, the region's air reacted with sunlight to form a thick, dark, eye-stingi...

Rosalin Benedict ∆ (Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada)Interembodied Attentiveness: Vibrational Encounters between Clinical Herbalists and Medicinal PlantsI intend to present a chapter on my ongoing thesis that explores how clinical herbalists cultivate, experience and express their felt, synergetic relationships with medicinal plants; and how the interconnectedness of humans and plants contributes to a more ecological and embodied approach to wellbe...

Cassandra Jones ∆ (Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Canada)Sensing Care: Poetic and Multisensory Approaches to Healthcare EnvironmentsThis paper explores the role of the sensory environment for people who are seriously ill or at end of life, using poetic inquiry as a rich, arts-based approach to sensory ethnography. Poetry offers a unique way to capture the essence of embodied experiences within healthcare environments.Poetry can he...

Aurélie Roy-Bourbeau ∆ (Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada)Within and Beyond Sight: An Ethnography of People with Visual ImpairmentIn this presentation, I will share the findings of my research conducted over the past two years and a half with individuals who have visual disabilities. This research explores the lived experiences of people whose vision differs from what is expected. Each participant has developed unique strategies to navigate their d...

Kelly Keenan ∆ (Département de danse, UQAM, Canada)Fluid Confluence(s): Plural Ways of Knowing in DanceThis article recognises that the dance class, and the fields of practice that we relate to in dance, pull along values, ways of knowing, normalised beliefs and cultural histories. Practice is never isolated: it is always relational and distinct. Using the 2024 Montreal Movement Educators Forum: Fluid Confluence(s) as a case study, this article explores how to unsettle d...

Organizer: Jayanthan Sriram ∆ (Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Canada)How do you experience light and sound in accordance to smell? If you think this question is asked backwards, with smell having to follow your sense of sound and light, you are in for a treat. Born out of a collaboration with the ITHQ (Institut de tourisme et d'hôtellerie du Québec) and ExperiSens, Modal Olfactory Atmosphere finds its second iteration as an interactive and collaborative workshop. W...

Room EV 6.270Lindsey French and Alex Young

ONLINE ONLYOrganizer: Jieling Xiao ∆ (School of Architecture and Design, Birmingham City University, UK)Design whose research explores place-based learning and design through sounds and smells. Her doctoral research explored smellscape pleasantness in transit spaces from a cross-cultural perspective. She is the lead editor for the Frontiers research topic 'Smell, wellbeing and the built environment'. She is currently working on two projects: Multi-modal Hong Kong project documen...

Organizer: Erin Hassard (Communication Studies, Concordia University, Canada)The struggle of discourse around abortion is the tension between the external patriarchal constructs and the epistemological nuances of having a uterus. In order to generously explore that discourse, space needs to be created that holds the weight of the issue but frees the participants from carrying it. Thus, I have created a game similar to "Cards Against Humanity". The game itself carries flippant connotati...

Organizer: Melissa Park (School of Physical and Occupational Therapy / Culture Mental Health Research Unit, Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, Canada)Speakers:• Emily Bain (Concordia University);• Martina Padovani (McGill University);• Meena Ramachandran (McGill University);• Tamara Stecyk and Vincent Laliberté (McGill University);• Havana Xeros (Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montreal, Canada)Discussant:• Florian Grond ...

Aaron Benavidez (Sociology, Harvard University, USA)From Organ to Receptor? The Future of the Western Scientific SensoriumIt is not uncommon to fasten the “Western” sensorial system to Aristotle who imagined the human senses as a quintet comprising sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch (Aristotle [c. 350 BCE] 1957b:219; Classen 1993). By the first half of the 19th Century—at the time Auguste Comte attempted to organize the sciences—the five-part conceptualization would re...

Organizer: Agustine Zegers ∆ (Santiago, Chile)Atmo-poiesis will be an olfactory workshop inviting an embodied awareness of how atmospheres reveal our embeddedness in systems of ecological collapse and emergence. The workshop will underscore Stacy Alaimo’s conception of Transcorporeality: inviting participants into a felt sense of the porosity of our bodies, and how much we are trans-touched by ecological shifts, material macrocosms, and a consortium of beings and animacies. Atmo-poiesi...

Room LB-207Organizer: Stephanie Grey ∆ with Christine Gallagher ∆ (Stir Copenhagen, USA) Invigorate your body and mind and participate in an experiential and creative workshop. Your point ofview is found through your senses as you focus on taste, texture, smell, sight and sound as a means toconnect with your surroundings. A sensory-focused methodology will guide you. We aim to expand yourpersonal awareness, as well as to help broaden and strength...

Organizers: Tim Horvath ∆ with Matthew Kirtkpatrick ∆ (Warren Wilson MFA Program in Writing/Phillips Exeter English Department, Stratham, USA)In this creative writing workshop, the leaders–writers whose recent projects push the boundaries of how language can be used to describe and evoke the non–visual (sound, scent, and texture)--will share writing activities designed to guide participants into fresh linguistic and conceptual zones. After reading from their own work, workshop leaders ...

Organizer: Natan Diacon-Furtado ∆ (The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (Electronic Arts), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA)Community Portal is an open-source decolonial collaborative technology for listening with your more-than-human community and local watershed. Engaging with practices of ancestral imagination (Petra Kuppers) and recuperation (Marlon Jiménez Oviedo) this workshop will explore the potential for urban computing and pervasive media to allow for a r...

Tin Cugelj ∆ (Independent scholar and IMS Study Group - Auditory History)‘Death was chasing us’: The Sea as a Sensory Agent of Early Modern Community FormationOn 13 October 1494, Pietro Casola experienced a storm during a pilgrimage. Driven by the intensity of the multisensorial experience, he wrote: “The following night the sea was so agitated that every hope of life was abandoned by all; I repeat by all ... Death was chasing us” (Casola 1494: 323). With the overwhelming...

Erika Wicky ∆ (Departments of History and Art History, Université de Grenoble, France)A Taste for the Scent of Sugar: Perfumery and Confectionery in 19th-Century FranceWhile the role of synthetic materials such as coumarin, heliotropin, and vanillin in the development of the perfume industry at the end of the 19th century is often acknowledged, it is frequently overlooked that these substances were initially used to flavor candies and liquors—two highly sweetened product...

Organizers: Jennifer Biddle √ (Ethnographic Media Lab (emLAB), UNSW Art & Design, Australia) and Tess Lea √ (Macquarie University, Australia) Jennifer Loureide Biddle √Live wire and speculative ethnographyThis is a new work of creative non-fiction as an experiment in speculative writing, attention and attestation. My interest is in the heritage and circulation of affect as techno-electric current and currency in writing a certain history of the pres...

Constance Classen ∆ (Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Canada)Green Museums: Narratives of Nature in English MuseumsIn recent years, growing attention has been paid to the interconnections between environmental issues and museums in England. Initially, much of this attention came from groups protesting the links between certain museums and the fossil fuel industry, most notably, the British Museum’s sponsorship by British Petroleum. The ‘Green Museums’ mov...

Paule Joseph (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA)From Pollution to Perception: VOCs, Smell Dysfunction, and Cognitive HealthVolatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are pervasive environmental pollutants linked to adverse respiratory, neurological, and systemic health effects. While urinary metabolites of VOCs are established biomarkers for exposure, their role in chemosensory health remains underexplored. Olfactory dysfunction, increasingly recognized as an early indi...

Sylvie Grosjean ∆ (University of Ottawa, Canada)Feeling Through Screens: Developing "Sensory Awareness" for Sensing at a Distance during Medical VideoconsultationsLupton & Maslen (2017) have highlighted the importance of examining the sensory aspects of clinical consultations using telemedicine devices. They have studied the entanglement of technology, bodies, affect, and sensory cues in clinical practice, emphasizing the role of these elements in supporting what they...

Clara Muller (Independent scholar)A Sense of Connection: Reclaiming Smell as a Medium for Multispecies Encounters in Contemporary ArtWithin “naturalist ontology” (Descola 2005), modern Westerners have lost touch with the knowledge and relationships that smell enables—not only with other humans but also with other- than-humans. Yet, given that smell constitutes a shared biological ground for almost all life on Earth, learning to make a conscious, informed and de-centered u...

Karla Berrens √ (Sociology, University of Barcelona, Spain)Being a Devil with a Brain InjuryI am a devil. I have a TBI. I will not quit.I have been researching the body in space and the making of place during Barcelona’s ‘correfocs’ for the last five years. ‘Correfocs’ are street performances where a group of people, called devils, dance to the sound of drummers whilst doing a very loud performance with different types of fire artifacts. This is intrinsically part of ...