Upcoming events and opportunities in Smell Studies
Multisensuality and Language Across Media, Cultures, and Histories: International Scientific Conference
This online conference explores the connections between multisensuality and language – as spoken, written, visual, tactile, or embodied experience – across cultural and historical contexts, and through diverse media forms.
ASLE 2025 BIENNIAL CONFERENCE COLLECTIVE ATMOSPHERES: AIR, INTIMACY, AND INEQUALITY July 8-11, 2025
We seek papers, creative works, and other forms of inquiry that engage with these concerns, broadly construed. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
“Settler atmospherics” (Simmons) and Indigenous activism
Climate and/as history; histories of weather
Sensing air pollution; citizen science around air pollution
The emergence and role of the “respiratory humanities” or “atmospheric humanities”
Relationship of the above to the “blue humanities,” “green ecocriticism,” and/or “energy humanities”; waves of ecocriticism
Aesthetics of visibility/invisibility and air
Representing air inequality in haptic, olfactory, or other non-visual media
Unhoused populations and air inequality
Environmental racism and air inequality
Wildfires and smoke; prescribed burns and Indigenous fire knowledge as alternative technologies
Respiratory pandemics and the media
Rhetoric of anti-AAPI hate during COVID-19
Masking and dis/ability rhetoric; long COVID and “crip time” (Alison Kafer)
Air purification technology and the commodification of air (see Yangdon Li)
“Atmospheric rivers,” flooding, and representation
Representations of atmospheric layers (troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere)
Air travel and alternatives
Space environmentalism: space debris, cosmic dust, extraterrestrial exploration
Airwaves, radio waves, soundwaves—from podcasts to birdsong
Affect studies and intangible/figurative atmospheres
We also welcome work that engages in other ways with the larger concerns outlined above—including climate change, environmental health and justice, settler colonialism—and/or with the vision and mission of ASLE, which seeks to inspire and promote intellectual work in the environmental humanities and arts. Our vision is an inclusive community whose members are committed to environmental research, education, literature, and art, as well as service, environmental justice, and ecological sustainability. See more here: https://www.asle.org/discover-asle/vision-history/.
‘A Sense of Nature’, SHNH International Summer Meeting
This two-day international meeting will explore the intersections of the senses – including sight (vision), sound (hearing), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation) and touch (tactile perception) – with the history of natural history.
Scent and Imagination
We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the interdisciplinary symposium Scent and Imagination, which will be held on June 4th, 2025, at CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), University of Cambridge, UK.
Uncommon Senses V: Sensing the Social, the Environment, and Across the Arts and Sciences - 7-11 May 2025, Montreal, Canada
The Call for Proposals will go out in September 2024. Please stay tuned.
Keep an eye out for more information here: https://www.sensorystudies.org/events-of-note/.
Olfactory Cultural Studies Workshop: 12-14 February, 2025, Helsinki, Finland
With support from NordForsk, we are happy to announce a call for papers and participation in an exploratory three-day workshop in “olfactory cultural studies”. This is the final workshop in a series of three independent yet related workshops across different Nordic countries, with a general objective to develop and investigate methodologies to explore how olfactory phenomena are conceptualised and contribute to meaning-making. The workshops centre on the significance of odours and the meanings ascribed to them, both in different physical environments and in media representations, thus complementing multisensory, multimodal cultural studies. Emphasis is laid on the role of olfactory phenomena in the construction of social and cultural identities. To address the olfactory cultural dynamics at stake, the workshops are guided by three main research
questions: a) How are different environmental odours made meaningful?
b) How are olfactory phenomena conceptualised and represented in art and the media? c) How do olfactory phenomena participate in the construction of social and cultural identities?
We hereby cordially ask all interested individuals to submit a paper proposal of 2000–3000 words (not including references) no later than 15 September 2024, via email to olfactory.cultures@gmail.com.
For more information: https://www.uniarts.fi/en/projects/olfactory-cultural-studies/
Environmental Health Humanities: Microbes, Plagues, and Healing (Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies) - December 31, 2024 deadline
For this special issue of Concentric, entitled “Environmental Health Humanities: Microbes, Plagues, and Healing,” we aim to delve into the imaginaries of diseases and viruses, as well as revisit discussions on healing within literature and culture. We invite submissions that are devoted to the interactions with nature and wildlife, food system, and changes in demography and technology. Additionally, the issue hopes to scrutinize the environmental and societal factors contributing to medical and environmental racism, alongside the erosion of social structures due to industrial technologies. We welcome analyses of mindful approaches such as dietary practices, gardening therapy, and activism, which can present alternative paths to healing within modern medicine. Furthermore, we encourage investigations into the spiritual dimensions as pivotal components of human and environmental health that may catalyze change in the Anthropocene era.
In their list of possible topics, they highlight: Odors, smells, and health
Please send complete papers of 6,000-10,000 words, 5–8 keywords, and a brief biography to concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw by December 31, 2024.
The following URL provides further information: http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/
POUSH Talks- "Controlling atmospheres: odor as a policy of action"
The (very) forthcoming lecture series accompanying the Par la Fumée exhibition at POUSH (PARIS) - that Sandra Barré curated - . Entitled “Contrôler les atmosphères, l'odeur comme politique d'action” (“Controlling atmospheres: odor as a policy of action”) are to start next week.
Par La Fumée, is on view in Paris until December 15th.
International Congress of Ambiances: Sensory Explorations, Ambiances in a Changing World - 8-11 October, 2024 - Lisbon/Rio de Janeiro
By focusing on the sensitive quality of spaces, Ambiances create layers of meaning on a conductive scale that eases the apprehension of everyday life, where the cultural and affective dimensions are translatable by the situated bodily experience, on a macroscopic scale, which intersects diverse cultures, rhythms and knowledge.
The study of Urban Ambiances has shown that the practical, experimental and relational nature of human-urban coexistence is one of the possible ways to overcome the dichotomies and fragilities posed by current dilemmas, such as the difficulty of urban mobility in various metropolises, social asymmetries, territorial conflicts at local level or the lack of public spaces enabling the satisfactory development of everyday life. At the same time, research into ambiances opens different possibilities for rethinking the way we occupy the world, because ambiances are agents that enable associative forms of sharing public spaces: they intensify social relations and make convivial relations less discordant.
While abstract submissions are now closed, you can still register to attend here: https://www.ambiances2024.com/.
Cultivating the senses / L’Inscription culturelle des sens (revue Nineteenth-Century French Studies) - September 1st deadline
Cultivating the senses / L’Inscription culturelle des sens: a special section to appear in Nineteenth-Century French Studies vol. 54 nos. 3–4 (spring–summer 2026)
Nineteenth-Century French Studies invites submissions, in French or in English, for a special section scheduled for publication in spring 2026.
Articles in French or in English and of max. 45,000 characters with spaces (notes included) should be submitted by 1 March 2025 to Evelyne Ender at e.ender@jhu.edu. For short initial proposals (max. 500 words) the deadline is 1 September 2024.
The following URL provides further information: https://www.ncfs-journal.org
Olfactory Cultural Studies Workshop - Copenhagen
NOS-HS Exploratory Workshops in
Olfactory Cultural Studies
Workshop 2, 15-17 April 2024, Copenhagen, Denmark
Call for papers and participation
With support from NordForsk, we are happy to announce a call for papers and participation in an exploratory three-day workshop in “olfactory cultural studies”. This is the second workshop in a series of three independent yet related workshops across different Nordic countries, with a general objective to develop and investigate methodologies to explore how olfactory phenomena are conceptualised and contribute to meaning-making. The final remaining workshop will be organised in Finland in 2025, with a call to be released in due course. This series of workshops centre on the significance of odours and the meanings ascribed to them, both in different physical environments and in media representations, thus complementing multisensory, multimodal cultural studies. Emphasis is laid on the role of olfactory phenomena in the construction of social and cultural identities. To address the olfactory cultural dynamics at stake, the workshops are guided by three main research questions:
a) How are different environmental odours made meaningful?
b) Howareolfactoryphenomenaconceptualisedandrepresentedinartandthemedia? c) How do olfactory phenomena participate in the construction of social and cultural
identities?
Workshop
The workshops are designed to combine ethnographic, experimental, and textual research. The Danish workshop is structured as follows (preliminary plans subject to change):
Day 1: Welcome and seminar session with participant paper presentation on the theme of “smell as knowledge-making”. Ethnographic exercise: “urban olfactowalk” to be conducted in a select environment and followed by methodological and theoretical reflection. Evening experimental exercise using specific examples of food products (e.g., wine, cheese) as the basis for a comparative examination of how specific odours can convey abstract non-nutritional knowledge such as terroir and production methods.
Day 2: Travel to off-site retreat. A seminar session with participants’ presentations on the theme of “technologies of art and mediation”, putting emphasis on how smell and smell concepts can be conveyed via different media (e.g., text, drawings, sound, performances, etc.), followed by methodological and theoretical reflection. Afternoon olfactowalk co-creation exercise.
Day 3: Ethnographic exercise: “spring-time olfactowalk”, to be conducted in a select environment and followed by methodological and theoretical reflection. Closing remarks and return to Copenhagen.
Submissions
We hereby cordially ask all interested individuals to submit a paper proposal of 2000-3000 words no later than 15 December 2023, via email to olfactory.cultures@gmail.com. The proposals form the basis for the seminar sessions and therefore should address its themes (“smell as knowledge-making” or “technologies of art and mediation”). The proposals should be in PDF format, appended with a one-page CV. While both single- and multi-author papers are welcome, only one presenting author can register for the workshop (a second presenting author is allowed on a case- by-case basis, if the authors can justify added value to the presentation).
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 9 January 2024. There is a limited number of seats in the workshop, and all participants are required to take part in all exercises and sessions. If selection is required due to the number of proposals, priority will be given to those who i) reside in the Nordic region as defined by NordForsk, and ii) address the themes of the workshop. Participation in the workshop is limited to those with an accepted paper presentation.
Travel and accommodation
The physical location of the workshop is in central Copenhagen followed by a 1.5 day off-site retreat. During the retreat, the organisers will cover one-night accommodation, local transport and comestibles.
While there is no cost to register for the workshop, participants are expected to cover their own travel to Copenhagen plus accommodations in Copenhagen. We hope to be able to offer financial support in terms of hotel vouchers for a limited number of participants, with priority given to early career researchers who do not have access to institutional support.
For further information regarding the other workshops or any other related matter, please do not hesitate to contact the organisers at olfactory.cultures@gmail.com.
Organisers
PI Professor Antti-Ville Villén, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland (Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge, UK)
Associate Professor Qian Janice Wang, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Associate Professor Erik Cyrus Fooladi, Volda University College, Norway Professor Anu Hopia, University of Turku, Finland
Equinoxes Conference- Fluid Encounters
The Brown University French and Francophone Studies Department is hosting its annual Graduate Student Conference, Equinoxes, from April 19-20th.
To find out more information, go here: § https://sites.google.com/brown.edu/equinoxesgradconf/call-for-papers?authuser=0.
The conference, Fluid Encounters/ Rencontres Fluides, is examining concepts of fluidity and gender. We are looking for anything linked to sensory studies and concepts of water, encounters, boundaries, and transformations.
Abstracts are due December 15, 2023.
**All proposals must be by a graduate student and must have something to do with French and Francophone Studies.
Odeuropa Smellinars
Odeuropa is organizing a series of online smellinars.
To sign up for the next one, visit this website: https://odeuropa.eu/smellinars/.
NOS-HS Exploratory Workshops in Olfactory Cultural Studies Workshop 1, 4–6 September 2023, Ålesund, Norway
Call for papers and participation
With support from NordForsk, we are happy to announce a call for papers and participation in an exploratory three-day workshop in “olfactory cultural studies”. This is the first workshop in a series of three independent yet related workshops across different Nordic countries, with a general objective to develop and investigate methodologies to explore how olfactory phenomena are conceptualised and contribute to meaning-making. The remaining two workshops will be organised in Denmark and in Finland in 2024, with calls to be released in due course. The workshops centre on the significance of odours and the meanings ascribed to them, both in different physical environments and in media representations, thus complementing multisensory, multimodal cultural studies. Emphasis is laid on the role of olfactory phenomena in the construction of social and cultural identities. To address the olfactory cultural dynamics at stake, the workshops are guided by three main research questions:
a) How are different environmental odours made meaningful?
b) How are olfactory phenomena conceptualised and represented in art and the media?
c) How do olfactory phenomena participate in the construction of social and cultural identities?
Workshop
The workshops are designed to combine ethnographic, experimental and textual research. The first workshop is structured as follows:
Day 1: ethnographic exercise: “marine summer-time olfactowalk”, to be conducted in a select environment and followed by methodological and theoretical reflection.
Day 2: experimental exercise at the Atlanterhavsparken Aquarium and Marine Science Museum in Ålesund, on the theme “wake up and smell the fish”. The exercise seeks to share and develop knowledge by exploring aesthetic and analytic sense experiences in an encounter between researchers and museum communicators. The exercise draws perspectives from a range of disciplines to highlight the potential for the sensory perception of smell in the domain of the marine.
Day 3: a seminar session with participants’ presentations on the theme of roles of smell (olfaction) in context-based communication and learning, followed by methodological and theoretical reflection. As opposed to rigid disciplinary thinking, the point of departure here is “what sensory perceptions and domains of knowledge can, or must, I rely on in this situation?”
Submissions
We hereby cordially ask all interested individuals to submit a proposal of up to 3,000 words no later than 1 May 2023, via email to olfactory.cultures@gmail.com. The proposals form the basis for the seminar session (Day 3) and therefore should address its theme (context-based olfactory communication and learning). The proposals should be in PDF format, appended with a one-page CV.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of May 2023. There is a limited amount of seats in the workshop, and all participants are required to take part in all exercises and sessions. If selection is required due to the amount of proposals, priority will be given to those who i) reside in the Nordic region as defined by NordForsk, and ii) address the theme of Day 3.
Travel and accommodation
The physical location of the workshop is on the island of Runde along the western coast of Norway (www.runde.no), with a day-trip to the Atlanterhavsparken Aquarium and Marine Science Museum in Ålesund (Day 2; https://en.atlanterhavsparken.no).
The organisers will cover accommodation, local transport and comestibles. Accommodation in Runde is in two-bedroom flats with shared bathrooms. Travel bursaries of up to €500 are available in exchange of receipts for a limited number of participants, with priority given to early career researchers who do not have access to institutional support.
For further information regarding the other two workshops or any other related matter, please do not hesitate to contact the organisers at olfactory.cultures@gmail.com.
Organisers
PI Professor Antti-Ville Villén, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland (Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge, UK)
Associate Professor Erik Cyrus Fooladi, Volda University College, Norway
Professor Anu Hopia, University of Turku, Finland
Associate Professor Qian Janice Wang, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Call for book chapters: "The Senses and Memory"
Call for Book Chapters: “The Senses and Memory”
Vernon Press invites book chapters for an edited volume on the subject of “The Senses and Memory.”
In the field of sensory studies, the role of memory in sensory perceptions has always been a central preoccupation. From smell’s “Proust effect” to music’s ability to improve memory and mood, the senses are processed in the brain in particular ways that highlight the strong link between remembering and sensing the world. Likewise, the senses work in tandem, through synesthesia, to evoke feelings and sensations of a past event. The body plays a central role in navigating the world, and the senses provide routes to past, at times forgotten, memories.
As sensory studies and memory studies continue to grow and shift as interdisciplinary fields, the overlap between the two demands further investigation. The aim of this edited volume is to dive deeper into the connections that exist between these two fields and to discuss underexplored topics within these areas of study, such as disability in narratives of sensory remembering and the sensory memories of plant and animal life. This volume is searching for creative, interdisciplinary works in the humanities that grapple with topics related to the senses and memory in new, understudied ways.
Questions of importance include: How do the senses evoke memory and convey details of an event? How is sensory memory different from other forms of memory? What is unique about one sense’s ability to evoke memory compared to the other senses? How do new technologies and art reframe the link between the senses and memory? How do mediums (films, texts, paintings, etc.) differ in their portrayal of sensory memory?
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
The senses in arts and media
New technologies
Disability studies
Synesthesia
Nostalgia
Environmental humanities
Animal and plant life
Conflict, violence, memory
Embodiment
Creative approaches to sensory memory
If you are interested in contributing to this edited volume, please submit your proposal (500-700 words abstract) along with a short biography (100-150 words) in PDF format by August 1st, 2023 to the book editor, Chanelle Dupuis (chanelle_dupuis@brown.edu).
Proposal acceptance will be notified by September 1st, 2023. Full chapter submissions are to be delivered by February 1st, 2024.
https://vernonpress.com/proposal/247/bcdfc194bf2f8453ba4365492903b901
Uncommon Senses IV: Sensory Ecologies, Economies, and Aesthetics
The senses work together in multifaceted and even dissonant ways. However, recognition of this multiplicity has been stymied by the emphasis on the “prereflective unity” of the senses within the phenomenology of perception, and the focus on harmonious integration within cognitive neuroscience. The collision of the senses is inherent to Marshall McLuhan’s notion of the “collideroscope” of the sensorium. With this conference, we seek to explore the potentialities of this conceptualization.
In the same spirit, the conference will welcome contributions relying on differing disciplinary perspectives. These perspectives may complement one another (multidisciplinary research) or they may coalesce (interdisciplinary research). “Cross-disciplinary research” is the expression we prefer – “crossing” in the sense of blending, but also of confronting.
The aim of the conference is to highlight the relevance of the emergent understanding of the collision of the senses to thinking about some burning issues of our times:
As regards ecology, we submit that one way to help offset climate catastrophe is to cultivate an ecology of the senses: rebalancing the senses can contribute to rebalancing our relationship to the environment. For this, we need to expand our sensorium and be more attentive to the existence and perceptions – or sentient capacities – of all beings, human and non-human, including matter.
As regards the economy, we submit that the upsurge in sensory marketing, trademarking sensations (colour, sound, gesture), and the coming to be of “the experience economy,” all shortchange our senses in the interests of capital accumulation. We stand for the liberation of the senses.
As regards aesthetics, we conceive of the aesthetic as grounded in passionate participation rather than disinterested contemplation, and experience instead of judgment. We recant Kant, and welcome interventions by artists interested in the potential of immersive media (intermedia and performance art) and blurring genres.
For more information: https://www.sensorystudies.org/uncommon-senses-iv-sensory-ecologies-economies-and-aesthetics/
Making Sense of Sensory Studies
Recent archaeological, historical, and ethnographical research has witnessed a phenomenon that can be called a sensory turn or even a sensual revolution with a growing number of publications aimed at sketching the sensory landscapes of past societies. In these recent studies, several methods to trace the ephemeral and already vanished sensory encounters have been developed from the more traditional approaches to more experimental ones.
The workshop Making sense of sensory studies aims to bring together the trailblazers of sensory studies in social sciences, archaeology, and history, for sharing the best methodological developments in recent sensory scholarship.
For more information: https://aias.au.dk/events/making-sense-of-sensory-studies
The Senses: Present Issues, Past Perspectives
They invite abstracts for 20-minute papers in the field of medieval sensory studies for the international workshop ‘The Senses: Present Issues, Past Perspectives.’ The workshop is organised by Prof. Annette Kern-Stähler (University of Bern, Switzerland), Prof. Elizabeth Robertson (University of Glasgow, UK), and Dr. des. Laura Bernardazzi (University of Bern, Switzerland) and is funded by the Congressi Stefano Franscini, Monte Verità, Switzerland, and the University of Bern.
For more information: https://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/call-for-papers-10/