Sensory studies arises at the conjuncture (and within) the fields of anthropology • sociology • history • archeology • geography • communications • religion • philosophy • literature • art history • museology • film • mixed media • performance • phenomenology • disability • aesthetics • architecture • urbanism • design

Sensory Studies can also be divided along sensory lines into, for example, visual culture, auditory culture (or sound studies), smell culture, taste culture and the culture of touch, not to mention the sixth sense (however it might be defined)

Research Profile >> Constance Classen

Constance Classen is a cultural historian specializing in the History of the Senses. Her latest works include The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (University of Illinois Press 2012), Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society (Routledge 2013, co-authored with David Howes) and The Museum of the Senses: Experiencing Art and Collections (Bloomsbury 2017). She is also the general editor of the six-volume Cultural History of the Senses set (Bloomsbury 2014). Her earlier works include The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (Routledge, 1998), Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures (Routledge, 1993), and Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (Routledge 1994, co-authored with David Howes and Anthony Synnott).

Dr. Classen has worked as a research fellow at Harvard University and the University of Toronto. She has also been a visiting fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture where she investigated the sensory dynamics of the Gothic Revival movement, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology at McGill University where she delved into the connections between historical multisensory aesthetic practices and current developments in multimedia art. Dr Classen’s work has been featured in popular and academic media such as The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, CBC Radio “Ideas,” and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Contact: constance.classen@concordia.ca