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)

Books of Note

This space is dedicated to highlighting the top books in sensory studies published each year. Many of these books you will find reviewed in the pages of The Senses and Society.

 

Books of Note 2024

Sensorium: Contextualizing the Senses and Cognition in History and Across Cultures
By David Howes
Cambridge University Press

 


Sensory Warfare in the Global Cold War: Partition, Propaganda, Covert Operations
Edited by Bodo Mrozek
Pennsylvania State University Press
30% off using Discount Code NR24

 


Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age
By Simeon Koole
University of Chicago Press

 

 


The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space
Edited by Emma-Kate Matthews, Jane Burry and Mark Burry
Routledge
*Partial Open Access

 


Sensory Penalities: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of Punishment and Social Control
Edited by Kate Herrity, Bethany E. Schmidt, and Jason Warr
Emerald

 


Acoustemology: Four Lectures
By Steven Feld
VoxLox
*Open Access

 


Engaging Ambience: Visual and Multisensory Methodologies and Rhetorical Theory
By Brian McNely
Utah State University Press

 


Connecting Visual Literacy to Theory: Revisiting the Disruptions of Visual Thinkers in Education and Beyond
Edited by Ricardo Lopez-Leon and Dana Statton Thompson
Routledge

 


Islamic Sensory History, vol. 2: 600-1500
Edited by Christian Lange and Adam Bursi
Brill
*Open Access

 


Tangible Territory Journal Issue #7
Edited by Tereza Stehlikova

 

 


Touch in Digitalized Worlds: special issue of Anthropology of Consciousness
Edited by Tuva Beyer Boch and Saiba Varma
Wiley

 


The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
By Zoë Schlanger
Harper Collins

 


Acoustics of Empire: Sound, Media, and Power in the Long Nineteenth Century
Edited by Peter McMurray and Priyasha Mukhopadhyay
Oxford University Press

 


How to Work with Space: Spatial Knowledge in Organizations and Research Practice
By Karen Messer
Palgrave Macmillan

 


Air Conditioning
By Hsuan L. Hsu
Bloomsbury
*Discount at the publisher’s website
*excerpt and interview with the New Books Network


Approaches sensible de l’espace. Regards croisés, anthropologie et égyptologie
Edited by Valentine Marlot, Quentin Cécillon and Misha Schroetter
Open Edition Journals
*Open Access


The Aesthetics of Tinnitus: The Senses and Society 19(1) special issue
Edited by Marie Thompson
Routledge

 


At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism
By Polina Dimova
Penn State University Press

 


Digital Touch
By Carey Jewitt and Sara Price
Polity

 

 

 

Books of Note 2023


Sensorial Investigations: A History of the Senses in Anthropology, Psychology, and Law
by David Howes
Penn State University Press

 


Worlds of Sense: Exploring the senses in history and across cultures
Constance Classen
Routledge

 

 


Elixir: A Parisian Perfume House and the Quest for the Secret of Life
by Theresa Levitt.
Harvard University Press

 

 


Visual Pedagogies: Concepts, Cases and Practices
Edited by Carolina Cambre, Edna Barromi-Perlman, and David Herman Jr.
Brill

 

 


Towards a Sociology of Selfies: The Filtered Face
By Carolina Cambre and Christine Lavrence
Routledge

 

 


Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
By James Bridle
Macmillan

 


Sense-It! : Insights into Multisensory Design
By Lois Frankel
Open Library
*Open Access


What’s That Smell: A Philosophy of the Olfactory
By Simon Hajdini
MIT Press

 


Apprendre les sens, apprendre par les sens. Anthropologie des perceptions sensorielles
By Vincent Battesti and Joël Candau
Petra

 


Sensibles ethnographies. Décalages sensoriels et attentionnels dans la recherce anthropologique
By Sisa Calapi, Helma Korzybska, Marie Mazzella di Bosco, and Pierre Peraldi-Mittelette
Petra

 


Just Beyond Listening: Essays of Sonic Encounter
By Michael C. Heller
University of California Press

 


The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography
Edited by Phillip Vannini
Routledge

 


Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design
By Charlotte Ribeyrol, Matthew Winterbottom, and Madeline Hewitson
Ashmolean Museum

 


The Sensorium of the Drone and Communities
By Kathrin Maurer
The MIT Press
*Open Access

 


Tangible Territory Journal Issue 6
Edited by Tereza Stehlikova

 

 


The Senses in Interior Design: Sensorial Expressions and Experiences
edited by John Potvin, Marie-Ève Marchand, and Benoit Beaulieu
Manchester University Press


Un Mundo de Sensaciones: siglos VIII al XVII (A world of sensations: 8th to 17th centuries)
Edited by Gerardo Rodriguez with a Foreword by David Howes
National University of Mar del Plata
*Open Access


Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice
By Mark Peter Wright
Bloomsbury

 


The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, 4th Edition
By Juhani Palasmaa
Wiley

 

 


Sentimental Empiricism: Politics, Philosophy, and Criticism in Postwar France
By Davide Panagia
Fordham University Press

 


Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840
By Michael J. Hatch
Penn State University Press

 


The Skills and Ethics of Professional Touch: From Theory to Practice
By Taina Kinnunen, Jaana Parviainen, and Anna Haho
Palgrave MacMillan

 


Race and Multimodality: Multimodality and Society Special Issue
Edited by Sachi Sekimoto and Christopher Brown
Sage Journals
*Free and/or Open Access

 


Senses with/out Subjects; Special Issue of American Literature
Edited by Erica Fretwell and Hsuan L. Hsu
American Literature, Duke University Press

 


Ways of Eating: Exploring Food Through History and Culture
By Benjamin A. Wurgraft and Merry I. White
University of California Press

 


Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives
By William Tullett
Bloomsbury Academic
*Open Access

 


L’expérience sensible
Edited by Camille Chamois, Quentin Deluermoz et Hervé Mazurel
L’Homme: Revue française d’anthropologie

 


Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia
By Kelvin E.Y. Low
Cambridge University Press

 


Sensing Disaster: Local Knowledge and Vulnerability in Oceania
By Matthew Lauer
University of California Press

 


Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape
By Jim Sykes and Julia Suzanne Byl
University of California Press

 


The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage
By Christy Spackman
University of California Press

 


Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France
By Cheryl Krueger
University of Toronto Press

 


Ecology, History and the Senses: Journal of Architecture Special Issue
Edited by Deljana Iossifova and Doreen Bernath
Journal of Architecture
*Partial Open Access Content Available

 


Music and the Senses: Nineteenth-Century Contexts Special Issue
Edited by Dane Stalcup
Nineteenth-Century Contexts, T&F Online
*Partial Open Access Content Available

 


Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats
Edited by Hannah Gould and Gwyn McClelland
Penn State University Press

 


Nosetalgia: kunstlicht 44 (2/3)
Edited by Lisa Marie Sneijder
Kunstlicht

 


Radiophilia
By Carolyn Birdsall
Bloomsbury

 


Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong
By Seán Street
Bloomsbury

 


Uncurating Sound: Knowledge with Voice and Hands
Salomé Voegelin
Bloomsbury

 


Food in Memory and Imagination: Space Place, and Taste
Edited by Beth Forrest and Greg de St Maurice
Bloomsbury

 


The Cultural Politics of Food, Taste, and Identity: A Global Perspective
Edited by Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz
Bloomsbury

 


Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy
Edited by Gabriele Ferretti and Brian Glenney
Routledge

 


Atmosphären-Äesthetik: Die Verflochtenheit von Natur, Kunst und Kultur (Atmosphere Aesthetics: The Interconnectedness of Nature, Art, and Culture
By Zhuofei Wang
Verlag Karl Alber

 


Art of Sound: Creativity in Film Sound and Electroacoustic Music
By Andrew Knight-Hill and Emma Margetson
Routledge

 


Gut Knowledges: Culinary Performance and Activism in the Post-Truth Era
By Kristin Hunt
Routledge

 


The Metamorphosis of Greek Cuisine: An Ethnography of Deli Foods, Restaurant Smells, and Foodways of Crisis
By Nafsika Papacharalampous
Routledge

 


The Senses and Society, Volume 18, Issue 2: Special Issue on Affective Technotouch
Edited by Amelia DeFalco and Luna Dolezal
Routledge
*Open Access Articles Available

 


The Atmospheric City
By Mikkel Bille and Siri Schwabe
Routledge

 


The Touch of the Present: Educational Encounters, Aesthetics, and the Politics of the Senses
By Sharon Todd
SUNY Press

 


Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies
By Helmi Järviluoma and Lesley Murray
Routledge

 


Techniques of Hearing: History, Theory and Practices
Edited by Michael Schillmeier, Robert Stock, and Beate Ochsner
Routledge

 


Literature and the Senses
Edited by Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson
Oxford University Press
*Open Access

 


Food History: A Feast of the Senses in Europe, 1750 to the Present
Edited by Sylvie Vabre, Martin Bruegel, and Peter J. Atkins
Routledge

 


Toward an Aisthetics of the Victorian Novel: Senses and Sensations
By Nadine Böhm-Schnitker
Routledge

 


Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rainforest
By Alice Rudge
University of Nebraska Press

 


Invisible Architecture: The experience of place through smell
Anna Barbara and Anthony Perliss
FrancoAngeli
*Open Access

 


Aural Diversity
Edited by John L. Drever and Andrew Hugill
Routledge

 


Capitalism and the Senses
Edited by Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman
University of Pennsylvania Press

 


Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell
By Xuelei Huang
Cambridge University Press

 


TT Journal Issue 5
edited by Tereza Stehlikova

 


Kinaesthesia in the Psychology, Philosophy and Culture of Human Experience
By Roger Smith
Routledge


SMELL
Edited by Andreas Philippopolous-Mihalopoulos, Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta, and Andrea Pavoni
University of Westminster Press


HEAR
Edited by Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta, Andrea Pavoni, and Andreas Philippopolous-Mihalopoulos
University of Westminster Press

 


Feltness: Research-Creation, Socially Engaged Art, and Affective Pedagogies
By Stephanie Springgay
Duke University Press


The Sensory Studies Manifesto: Tracking the Sensorial Revolution in the Arts and Human Sciences
By David Howes
University of Toronto Press


Atmospheres and Shared Emotions
Edited by Dylan Trigg
Routledge

 

 


Ambiance, Tourism, and the City
Edited by Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros, Daniel Paiva, and Daniel Malet Calvo
Routledge

 

 


Virtual Book Exhibition at Uncommon Senses IV Conference (May 2023)

 

Books of Note 2023

Books of Note 2022

Books of Note 2021

Books of Note 2020

Books of Note 2019

Books of Note 2018

Books of Note 2017

Books of Note 2016

Books of Note 2015

Books of Note 2014

Books of Note 2013

Books of Note 2012

Books of Note 2011

Books of Note 2010

Books of Note 2009

Books of Note 2008

Books of Note 2007

 

If there is a book you think might be appropriate for this list, please send news of it (including a link to the relevant page on the publisher’s website) to senses@concordia.ca