What Can Sensory History Teach Us about the Senses and Immersive Experience

Creative Language Technologies

This is episode #5 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 11th of November 2021. In today’s show, I am talking to Dr. Mark M. Smith, Carolina Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina. Mark is the author of numerous books on history and the history of the senses - and in this show we are focusing on two of his most recent books: ‘Emotion, Sense, Experience’ (co-authored with Rob Boddice) and ‘A Sensory History Manifesto’. Starting with basic definitions of human experience, lived experience, and the history of the senses, we address the central role the senses play in understanding experience, especially experience in the past. In both books, Prof. Smith advocates for a broader dialogue on the treatment of the senses, the need for a more situated context in methodological investigations that would lead to “a more accurate, robust, and ultimately, more meaningful history of human experience” (Boddice & Smith, 2020). Mark also believes that the future of sensory history would greatly benefit from a wider interdisciplinary engagement of the community at large.

In the second part of the show, we tackle issues related to the role of technology (especially artificial intelligence) in shaping our awareness and use of the senses as well as the practices of sensory history. Specifically, advances in immersive technologies (including the Metaverse) would eventually make possible Alain Corbin’s famous meditation on the tight connection between the senses and emotions: “There is no other way” he said, “to know men of the past than by trying to borrow their glasses and to live their emotions.” And, of course, we had to close the discussion with a short incursion in the sensory shift brought by the pandemic. Ethical implications of consuming, using, and monetizing historical experience were also addressed. Here is the show.
Show Notes:

• Definitions: Sensory history, lived experience, sensory knowledge
• Importance of analyzing senses: unpacking the meaning of a moment in the past
• How do people sense and what kind of meaning do they give to it
• How to look at historical evidence with a sensory nose:
  • context/discourse/words matter: importance of contextualization in using and interpreting historical past through the senses
• Need for healthy disputes in field formation
• Pressure in Higher Education: to make research look relevant to contemporary society
• Careful attention: the pitfalls of (disingenuous) consumption of the past
• Which approach is better to consider: senses in isolation or senses as an inter-related whole?
• Importance of interdisciplinary research of the senses: call for a genuine, authentic, and equitable dialogue across many disciplines
• Role of Immersive Technologies (i.e., Artificial Intelligence) in shaping our awareness and use of the senses
  • Why this quest for immersion and what it entails
  • Degree of authenticity
  • Difference between re-constructing the past and the immersive experience in the Metaverse
• Disgustology - in predicting voting patterns
• Impact of the pandemic on the senses

Books mentioned:

Boddice, Rob and Mark M. Smith. Emotion, Sense, Experience. Cambridge University Press. 2020.

Smith, Mark M.. A Sensory History Manifesto: 4 (Perspectives on Sensory History). Penn State University Press. 2021.

Contact info: For more information on Prof. Smith’s books and research visit:

https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/smith_m_mark.php
https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09017-7.html