Description
Book SynopsisEmpire of the Senses brings together pathbreaking scholarship on the role the five senses played in early America. With perspectives from across the hemisphere, exploring individual senses and multi-sensory frameworks, the volume explores how sensory perception helped frame cultural encounters, colonial knowledge, and political relationships. From early French interpretations of intercultural touch, to English plans to restructure the scent of Jamaica, these essays elucidate different ways the expansion of rival European empires across the Americas involved a vast interconnected range of sensory experiences and practices. Empire of the Senses offers a new comparative perspective on the way European imperialism was constructed, operated, implemented and, sometimes, counteracted by rich and complex new sensory frameworks in the diverse contexts of early America. This book has been listed on the Books of Note section on the website of Sensory Studies, which is dedicated to highlighting the top books in sensory studies: www.sensorystudies.org/books-of-note
Trade Review“This volume edited by Hacke and Musselwhite presents substantial, thought-provoking research in the blooming field of sensory history of the Americas, allowing for a deeper understanding of early modern European association of specific sensory regimes with imperial authority.” Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, University of Zurich. In: Emotions, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2018), pp. 347-349.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Making Sense of Colonial Encounters and New Worlds Daniela Hacke and Paul Musselwhite Part 1: Cultural Encounters 1 Touching on Communication: Visual and Textual Representations of Touch as Friendship in Early Colonial Encounters Céline Carayon 2 Mission Soundscapes: Demons, Jesuits, and Sounds in Antonio Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista Espiritual (1639) Jutta Toelle 3 Singing with Strangers in Early Seventeenth-century New France Michaela Ann Cameron Part 2: Colonial Subjectivity 4 The Pain of Senses Escaping: Eighteenth-century Europeans and the Sensory Challenges of the Caribbean Annika Raapke 5 Color Visions: Perceiving Nature in the Portuguese Atlantic World Marília dos Santos Lopes Part 3: Structures of Knowledge 6 Colonial Sensescapes: Thomas Harriot and the Production of Knowledge Daniela Hacke 7 Merian and the Pineapple: Visual Representation of the Senses Megan Baumhammer and Claire Kennedy 8 “Delightful a Fragrance”: Native American Olfactory Aesthetics Within the Eighteenth-century Anglo-American Botanical Community Andrew Kettler Part 4: Colonial Projects 9 The Aromas of Flora’s Wide Domains: Cultivating Gardens, Aromas, and Political Subjects in the Late Seventeenth-century English Atlantic Kate Mulry 10 Exploring Underwater Worlds: Diving in the Late Seventeenth-/Early Eighteenth-century British Empire Rebekka von Mallinckrodt Index
