We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for our annual conference on Early Modern Sensory Experiences (EMSE 2022) to be held at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, 9-10 June 2022.

Please register before 30 May 2022: shorturl.at/htM14

Online registration is free; in person registration covers catering costs.

Programme

9 JUNE 2022

9:00-9:45 – Registration and coffee
9:45-10:00 – Welcome (Leah Clark and Helen Coffey)

10:00-11.30 – Sensory Agents I: Materials
Chair: Helen Coffey
- Bettina Varwig, University of Cambridge: ‘Early Modern Synaesthesia and the Sweetness of Song’
- Cheng He, University of Warwick: ‘Multisensory Experience of Understanding Lacquer in Early Modern England’
- Amrita Chattopadhyay, Jawaharlal Nehru University: ‘Illumination in Early Modern India: Material Practices and Sensory Experiences’

11:30-12:00 – Coffee

12:00-13:00 – Sensory Agents II: Objects
Chair: Helen Coffey
- Margit Thøfner, The Open University: ‘Framing Music: an integrative meditation on the organ and the organ case in Kristkirken in Tondern/Tønder (present-day southern Denmark)’
- Nathalie Jeter, University of Oxford: ‘Twelve Years a (Galley) Slave: a sensory and material reading of Jean Marteilhe’s Mémoires d’un Galérien’

13:00-14:00 – Lunch

14:00-15:30 – Spirituality and the Senses
Chair: Leah R. Clark
- Katherine Powers, California State University, Fullerton: ‘Sensory Experience in Devotions: Serafino Razzi’s Laude for Nuns in Contemplation.’
- Laura Jayne Wright, University of Oxford: ‘‘I speak this with reverence’: sounds of dissent in Anna Trapnel’s visionary prose.’
- Hayley Bowman, University of Michigan: ‘Sensing Sor María de Jesús: Women’s Authority in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World’

15:30-16:00 – Coffee

16:00-17:30 – Senses of Place
Chair: Leah R. Clark
- Deborah Howard, University of Cambridge: ‘The foundation ceremonies of the votive churches of the Redentore (1577) and Santa Maria della Salute (1631) in Venice: sensory impact and ritual purification’
- Helena Guzik, University of Oxford: ‘Sensory Experiences in Elite Premodern Pilgrimage Networks: Luchino dal Campo's Viaggio a Gerusalemme’
- Neha Vermani, University of Sheffield: ‘The Mughal Gentlemen’s House: Sensory Explorations of the Material World in Early Modern South Asia (16th to 17th century)’

18:00 – Drinks followed by conference dinner (additional registration required)

10 JUNE 2022

9:30-11:00 – Recapturing Sensorial Experiences
Chair: Leah R. Clark
- Mary Katherine Newman, University of Oxford: ‘Methodological considerations when reconstructing the early modern Reche-Mapuche sensory experience’
- Anuradha Gobin, University of Calgary: ‘Sorrows for Sweetness: Tactility, Aurality and the Afterlife of Material Culture from Dutch Brazil’
- María Lumbreras, University of California, Santa Barbara: ‘Sensorial Forensics: Antiquarianism in Granada c. 1595’

11:00-11:30 – Coffee

11:30-13:00 – Nature and the Body
Chair: Leah R. Clark
- Tassanie Alleau, University of Tours, CESR: ‘Splendour and misery of a plant: cassava and its sensory qualities across the ocean in early modern times’
- Andrew Kettler, Kenyon College: ‘The Miasmic Theft of Modernity: Sulfuric Aromata and Early Modern Empires’
- Giacomo Savani, University of St Andrews: ‘Sensing the Spa: Medicine, Bathing, and the Female Body in Renaissance Italy'

13:00-14:00 – Lunch

14:00-15:30 – Experiences of Performance
Chair: Helen Coffey
- Peter K. Andersson, Orebro University: ‘Nips of New School: The Chastisement of Domestic Fools in the Early Modern Period’
- Elizabeth Dieterich, Carnegie Mellon University: ‘Touching Feeling in the Playhouse: Senses and Affect in Early Modern Drama’
- Simon Smith, University of Birmingham: ‘Music and the senses at the early modern Inns of Court’

15:30-16:00 – Coffee

16:00-17:30 – Feasting
Chair: Helen Coffey
- David Rolf Strom-Olsen, IE University, Madrid: ‘A Feast for the Senses: sensory aesthetic as political power at the Voeu du Faisan (1454)’
- Meike Wiedemann, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich and Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg: ‘With all the senses – dining at the 16th century Jagiellonian court’
- Amy Orrock and Clara Baudet, Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park/University of Oxford: ‘Tasting Naples: Wine, figs, and feasting at the Cuccagna’

17:30 – Closing remarks followed by drinks

https://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/medieval-and-early-modern-research/sensory-experiences