Image credit:
“Ecosopher: Thread Art.”
One in a series. This drawing is a schematic exploration of the relationships between ecological concerns, technology, idealism and art.
Erik Adigard, M.-A.-D.
(m-a-d.com)
We, the organizing committee for Uncommon Senses V, have deliberately cast this Call for Papers in the broadest possible terms, so as to promote the exploration of the intersections between sensory studies and today's most pressing social and environmental challenges. The overarching aim of the conference is to show how sensory studies offers unique and valuable perspectives that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries, enriching our understanding of how we perceive, interpret, and respond to these challenges. We are as interested in investigating how differing disciplinary perspectives complement one another (multidisciplinary research) as in how they coalesce (interdisciplinary research), but “cross-disciplinary research” is the term we prefer – “crossing” in the sense of confronting, as well as conjoining.
This conference seeks to advance the ever-expanding field of sensory studies, and its rich contribution to framing and generating creative solutions to today’s challenges. We invite proposals that speak to any of the following breaking areas of research.
- Anthropology of the senses: How cultural practices shape sensory experiences and perceptions in diverse societies and diverse groups within societies.
- Geography of the senses: The role of sensory perception in our interactions with environments, both urban and rural, and its impact on our sensitivity towards environmental challenges.
- Sociology of the senses: Understanding the social implications of sensory experiences and how they influence group dynamics.
- History of the senses: Tracing the convolutions of sense perception across different historical periods, with a particular focus on cultural history and art history (or how the production and experience of art differs across time and what lessons we might learn from this for today’s art)
- Sensory education: Innovations in teaching and learning through multimodal and intermodal approaches.
- Multisensory design: Designing spaces and products that engage multiple senses for enhanced user experience and sustainability.
- Architecture and the senses: Creating built environments that consider and promote sensory experiences across cultural and bodily differences.
- Critical disability studies and the senses: Investigating how sensory perceptions are altered or accommodated in the context of disability.
- Sense and Technology Studies (STS): Injecting a focus on sensing into Science and Technology Studies, and asking such questions as: How do sensors shape everyday life?
- Sensory ecology/multispecies ethnography: Understanding how non-human species perceive the world, and what this can teach us about our own sensory experiences and the environments we shape for all living beings.
- Medicine (including Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and the senses: Exploring the role of sensory experiences in illness, healing and the pursuit of well-being.
The above list is illustrative, not exhaustive.
Keynote speakers include:
- Indian philosopher and social critic Sundar Sarukkai, co-author (with Gopal Guru) of The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory (2012) and Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social (2019) to speak on ‘sensing the social’;
- Russian literary scholar Polina Dimova, author of At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism (2024) to speak on ‘the unity of the senses and the arts in the fin de siècle’;
The conference will take place from May 7-10, 2025 at Concordia University, Montreal. It will be a hybrid event: participants can attend in person or on-line, albeit along parallel tracks except in the case of the keynotes and select other events.
Proposals for individual papers, panels (up to three papers) as well as workshops and roundtables relating to any of the above topics (and more) are warmly welcomed.
Proposals for art installations in the gallery spaces reserved for the conference (one virtual, the other physical), and proposals for films or videos to be shown in the Concordia Black Box, are also invited. We attach a premium to research-creation or ‘arts-based practice.’
All proposals will be peer-reviewed.
- Call for Panels, Roundtables, Workshops and Individual Papers to be posted on the Events of Note page on the Sensory Studies website as of September 15, 2024 and close on November 15, 2024. Results will be announced in December 2024.
Submit and Individual Paper Proposal:
- Call for Art Installations (both physical and virtual) and Videos to be posted on the Events of Note page on the Sensory Studies website on September 15, 2024 and close on November 15, 2024. Results will be announced in December 2024.
Submit an art proposal (in-studio or virtual)
- Registration opens on January 1, 2025
- Conference Fee: Regular $230; Student/Underemployed $85 in person
Regular $75 and Student/Underemployed $35 on-line only
Organizing Committee: Sowparnika Balaswaminathan (Religions and Cultures), Florian Grond (Design and Computation Arts), and David Howes (Sociology and Anthropology).
Communications Coordinator: Craig Farkash (Social and Cultural Analysis PhD Program)
Inquiries may be addressed to senses@concordia.ca