How to... smell, hear, touch and taste the past

The first of the CEMS cross-disciplinary ‘How to . . .?’ seminars will be led by Professor Leah Clark (Kellogg) on ‘Sensory Methodologies: Piloting a Sensory Toolkit’.

18 November

12.30-2.00

Schwarzman Centre Room 10.424

We will be workshopping a sensory artefact toolkit. The toolkit is a work in progress, but it allows us to explore different methodologies on how to tackle historical artefacts. Please come along with an early modern ‘artefact’ to toolkit (‘artefact’ can be any historical object of inquiry (an object, a text, a space, an ephemeral experience)). The best kind of objects are those that raise methodological problems, things that don’t have archival evidence for them, or require an alternative approach to the traditional ways of doing historical research. It’s quite a creative exercise, so definitely bring a sense of flexibility and willingness to push the boundaries of historical research! This toolkit was developed by a team of interdisciplinary scholars as part of the Sensory Subjectivities project.

Please send a powerpoint slide of your historical artefact by Friday, Week 3 (30 Oct) to the CEMS research coordinator, Clémence Smith (clemence.smith@oriel.ox.ac.uk) (or of course if you have the original/facsimile, please bring that along!).

Recommended Readings:

• Larissa Brewer‐García and Cécile Fromont, “From Hell to Hell: Central Africans and Catholic Visual Catechesis in the Early Modern Atlantic Slave Trade,” Art History 46, 5 (2023): 946-77. Download here
• Aaron M. Hyman and Barbara E. Mundy, “The Colonial Archive and Its Fictions,” Colonial Latin American Review 32, 3 (2023): 312-44. Download here

A sandwich lunch will be provided. All are welcome.