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Sensory History

Mark M Smith author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:1st Dec '07

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Sensory History cover

Also available in paperback, 9781845204150 GBP16.99 (December, 2007)

Defines sensory history and stresses the importance of historicizing the senses. This book includes examinations of visual culture in Victorian Britain and South America, of sound in nineteenth-century Australia and France, and of gender politics and touch in Early Modern Europe and among Native Americans.This book can be purchased by customers in the US or Canada from the University of California Press.Sensory History introduces a topic that is rapidly becoming of enormous interest to historians - incorporating the senses into our understanding of the past.The book defines "sensory history," stresses the importance of historicizing the senses, and considers each sense chapter by chapter. The author concludes by pondering future directions of the field.Drawing on examples from across the globe throughout time, Sensory History includes examinations of visual culture in Victorian Britain and South America, of sound in nineteenth-century Australia and France, and of gender politics and touch in Early Modern Europe and among Native Americans. It also discusses "race" and olfaction in the United States, scent in ancient Christianity, and the role of taste in shaping national identity in modern China and Early America. By attending carefully to the social history of the senses, Sensory History also reconsiders the value of paradigmatic explanatory models linking print, vision and modernity, and evaluates their relevance to the study of sensory history.Sensory History will be a key text for an emerging field.

'This book is an excellent introduction to a distinctive style of inquiry and a trustworthy guide to what is now a fast-emerging field of study.'THE'Mark M. Smith has a good record of communicating his research to a broad constituency within and beyond the academy ... This will be required reading for anyone addressing sensory history.'Penelope Gouk, Manchester University'In this inspiring book, Mark M. Smith blows the dust off the documents and monuments historians normally concentrate on in their efforts to reconstruct the past, and breathes new life into the sounds and textures, scents and sights that have shaped the consciousness of historical actors from antiquity to the present. Sensory History thus makes for sensational reading, and at the same time offers a critical take on the burgeoning literature in this dynamic new field of inquiry. Smith's history of the sensate is destined to precipitate a revolution in our understanding of the sensibilities that underpinned the

ISBN: 9781845204143

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 14mm

Weight: unknown

192 pages