Books of Note
This space is dedicated to highlighting the top books in sensory studies published each year. Many of these books you will find reviewed in the pages of The Senses and Society.
Books of Note 2026
Sense-Making: New Sensory Methods for Exploring the Past and Imagining Possible Futures
By Sheryl Boyle, Genevieve Collins, and David Howes
Routledge
Link to Companion Webpage
Interview
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine
Edited by William J. Buxton
University of Alberta Press
Making Common Sense: On the Construction of the Obvious from Antiquity to AI
By Michael North
Stanford University Press
Sensing Qualia: Solving the Hard Problem of Consciousness
By Paul G. Skokowski
The University of Chicago Press
Listening on Display: Exhibiting Sounding Artworks, 1960s to the Present
By Linnea Semmerling
Bloomsbury
Visual Music: A History and Theory of the Abstract Moving Image
By Henry Balme
Bloomsbury
Wild Sound
By Michael Pigott
Bloomsbury
Textile Translations: Weaving Stories, Touching Meanings
By Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte
Routledge
Sensory Rhetorics: Sensation, Persuasion, and the Politics of Feeling
Edited by Steph Ceraso and Jonathan W. Stone
Penn State University Press
Tangible Territory Journal Issue #9
Edited by Tereza Stehlíková
Music at the Margins of Sense
By Jessica A. Holmes
University of Michigan Press
Books of Note 2025
Senses and Society 20(2) – Multisensory Ethnography and Synaesthetics
Edited by Abou Farman and David Howes
Taylor & Francis
Exiled From Our Bodies: How to Come Back to Our Senses
By Tereza Stehlíková
Routledge
Review
Sonic Socialism: Crisis and Care in Pandemic Hanoi
By Christina Schwenkel
University of California Press
Open Access
Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography
By Jeremy Stolow
The MIT Press
Somaesthetics and Anthropology
Edited by David Howes and Mark K. Watson
The Journal of Somaesthetics 11(1)
*Open Access
Sensing the Landscape: An Ethnography of Blindness
By Karis Jade Petty
Routledge
On the Colors of Vowels: Thinking Through Synesthesia
By Liesl Yamaguchi
Fordham University Press
The Culture Box: Museums as Media
By Harley Parker
University of Alberta Press
Harley Parker: McLuhan of the Museum
By Gary Genosko
University of Alberta Press
La Poutine: Culture et identité d’un pays incertain
By Geneviève Sicotte
Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal
Beyond Perception: Correspondences with Tim Ingold’s Work
Edited by Caroline Gatt and Jan Peter Laurens Loovers
Routledge
*Open Access
Forms of the Visible: An Anthropology of Figuration
By Philippe Descola
Polity
The Matter of Hospitals: An Alphabetical Investigation
Edited by Anna Harris
Maastricht University Press
Beyond the Park: An Anthology of Ecological Experiences
Edited by Angel Mota
Laberinto Press
Soundscapes of Life: Deep Listening to the World Around Us
By Mike Edwards
Routledge
Sense Knowledge and the Challenge of Italian Renaissance Art: El Greco, Velázquez, Rembrandt
By Giles Knox
Routledge
Writing Sensation: Sense, Events, and Encounters with Creative-Relational Inquiry
By Andrew Mark Gillott
Routledge
Unsound Supplies: Noisy Matter and the Making of Modern Soundscapes
Edited by Fanny Gribenski, David Pantalony, and Viktoria Tkaczyk
Oxford University Press
Disenchanting the Senses: Sulfuric Discourse and the World System
By Andrew Kettler
Cambridge University Press
Wittgenstein on Private Language, Sensation and Perception
By Michael Hymers
Cambridge University Press
Writing Noise in Interwar Britain: Literature and the Politics of Sound
By Anna Snaith
Oxford University Press
Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality
By Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr
University of California Press
*Open Access
Ambiances: A Sensitivity to Ordinary Situations
Edited by Jean-Paul Thibaud, Nicolas Tixier, and David Zerbib
Routledge
Studies in Shi’i Materiality
Series edited by Karen Ruffle and Babak Rahimi
Edinburgh University Press
Luxury and the Senses: Past, Present, and Future
Edited by Yasmin K. Sekhon Dhillon and Jo Norman
Bloomsbury Academic
Literature as Sound Studies
Edited by yasser elhariry and Liesl Yamaguchi
Bloomsbury Academic
Tastes of Justice: The Aesthetics and Politics of Food-art Practices in Asia and Australia
Edited by Francis Maravillas, Marnie Badham, Stephen Loo, and Madeleine Collie
Routledge
Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown
By Kate Herrity
Bristol University Press
Sound and Detention: Towards Critical Listening, Sonic Citizenship and Social Justice
Edited by Lucy Cathcart Frödén, Kate Herrity, and Áine Mangaoang
Bloomsbury
Color Protocols: Technologies of Racial Encoding in Chromatic Media
Edited by Carolyn L. Kane and Lida Zeitlin-Wu
MIT Press
Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture
By David Serlin
The University of Chicago Press
The Art of Sensorial Language
By Barbara Pia Jenič
Routledge
The Translation of Experience: Cultural Artefacts in Experiential Translation
Edited by Ricarda Vidal and Madeleine Campbell
Routledge
Open Access
Learning to Hear: The Auditory Bases of Excellence in Practicing Medicine, Climbing Mountains, Making Music, and Communicating in Morse Code
By Sarah Maslen
Columbia University Press
The Senses and Memory
Edited by Chanelle Dupuis
Vernon Press
Use the code CFC13978369C9 for a 24% discount
Sound Tactics: Auditory Power in Political Protests
By Justin Eckstein
Penn State University Press
Open Access
LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture
Sense Special Issue
Investigaciones Sensoriales: Una Historia de los Sentidos en la Antropología, la Psicología y el Derecho
By David Howes
Translated by Carlos Domínguez, Gerardo Rodríguez y María Emilia García Miranda
Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata
The Routledge History of the Senses
Edited by Andrew Kettler and Will Tullett
Routledge
Translating Indigenous Knowledges: Toward a Sensuous Translation
By Ma Carmen África Vidal Claramonte
Routledge
The Sound of Architecture: Acoustic Atmospheres in Place
Edited by Angeliki Sioli and Elisavet Kiourtsoglou
Leuven University Press
*Open Access
Cultural Heritage and Mobility from a Multisensory Perspective
Edited by Magdalena Banaszkiewicz and Karolina Nikielska-Sekula
Taylor & Francis
*Open Access
Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity
Edited by Simon Stjernholm
Bloomsbury
Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses
By Erik Varden
Bloomsbury
Sensitive Modalities of Knowing in Care
Edited by Fabienne Malbois and Alexandre Lambelet
Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances special issue
*Open Access
New Sensory Approaches to the Past: Applied Methods in Sensory Heritage and Archaeology
edited by Pamela Jordan, Sara Mura, and Sue Hamilton
UCL Press
Corps&Graphies
Edited by Carole Baudin, Laure Garrabée, and Jeanne-Martine Robert
OpenEdition
Books of Note 2024
Sensorium: Contextualizing the Senses and Cognition in History and Across Cultures
By David Howes
Cambridge University Press
The Explorations of Edward Snow Carpenter: Anthropology Upside Down
By Richard Cavell
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Sensing Health: Bodies, Data, and Digital Health Technologies
By Mikki Kressbach
University of Michigan Press
Open Access
Experiencing Sound: The Sensation of Being
By Lawrence Kramer
University of California Press
Sensory Tourism: Senses and SenseScapes Encompassing Tourism Destinations
Edited by Ian Jenkins and Robert Bristow
CABI
Senses, Cognition, and Ritual Experience in the Roman World
Edited by Blanka Misic and Abigail Graham
Cambridge University Press
Open Access
Senses of Architecture: Using the Senses to Enhance Architectural Experience
By Ryan Crooks
BIS Publishers
Stepping in the Madang: Sustaining Expressive Ecologies of Korean Drumming and Dance
By Donna Lee Kwon
Wesleyan University Press
Sounds of Other Shores: The Musical Poetics of Identity on Kenya’s Swahili Coast
By Andrew J. Eisenberg
Wesleyan University Press
Beyond the Park: An Anthology of Ecological Experiences
Edited by Angel Mota
Laberinto Press
The Perfume of Soul from Freud to Lacan: A Critical Reading of Smelling, Breathing, and Subjectivity
By Berjanet Jazani
Routledge
The Flesh of Animation: Bodily Sensations in Film and Digital Media
By Sandra Annett
University of Minnesota Press
The Alpine Enlightenment: Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Nature’s Sensorium
By Kathleen Kete
The University of Chicago Press
The Anthropology of Smell
By Mojca Ramšak
Springer
Cultural Heritage and Mobility from a Multisensory Perspective
Edited by Magdalena Banaszkiewicz, Karolina Nikielska-Sekuła
Routledge
*Partial Open Access
Sonic Pasts: Acoustical Heritage and Historical Soundscapes
By Mariana J López
Focal Press
Skateboarding and the Senses: Skills, Surfaces, and Spaces
By Sander Hölsgens and Brian Glenney
Routledge
*Open Access
The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600-1800: Early Modern ‘Convents of Pleasure’
By Nicky Hallett
Routledge
Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds
By Alex K. Gearin
Stanford University Press
Translation and Objects: Rewriting Migrancy and Displacement through the Materiality of Art
By Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte
Routledge
*Partial Open Access
Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters
Mª Carmen África Vidal Claramonte
Routledge
Sensory Warfare in the Global Cold War: Partition, Propaganda, Covert Operations
Edited by Bodo Mrozek
Pennsylvania State University Press
30% off using Discount Code NR24
Sensory Probes: Essays and exercises for teachers to cultivate artistic attitudes in the classroom
By The SenseSquared collective (edited by Anna Harris)
Free PDF download
Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception
By Peter Antich
Routledge
The Vast Extent: On Seeing and Not Seeing Further
By Lavinia Greenlaw
Faber
Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age
By Simeon Koole
University of Chicago Press
The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space
Edited by Emma-Kate Matthews, Jane Burry and Mark Burry
Routledge
*Partial Open Access
Sensory Penalities: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of Punishment and Social Control
Edited by Kate Herrity, Bethany E. Schmidt, and Jason Warr
Emerald
Acoustemology: Four Lectures
By Steven Feld
VoxLox
*Open Access
Engaging Ambience: Visual and Multisensory Methodologies and Rhetorical Theory
By Brian McNely
Utah State University Press
Connecting Visual Literacy to Theory: Revisiting the Disruptions of Visual Thinkers in Education and Beyond
Edited by Ricardo Lopez-Leon and Dana Statton Thompson
Routledge
Islamic Sensory History, vol. 2: 600-1500
Edited by Christian Lange and Adam Bursi
Brill
*Open Access
Tangible Territory Journal Issue #7
Edited by Tereza Stehlikova
Touch in Digitalized Worlds: special issue of Anthropology of Consciousness
Edited by Tuva Beyer Boch and Saiba Varma
Wiley
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
By Zoë Schlanger
Harper Collins
Acoustics of Empire: Sound, Media, and Power in the Long Nineteenth Century
Edited by Peter McMurray and Priyasha Mukhopadhyay
Oxford University Press
How to Work with Space: Spatial Knowledge in Organizations and Research Practice
By Karen Messer
Palgrave Macmillan
Air Conditioning
By Hsuan L. Hsu
Bloomsbury
*Discount at the publisher’s website
*excerpt and interview with the New Books Network
Approaches sensible de l’espace. Regards croisés, anthropologie et égyptologie
Edited by Valentine Marlot, Quentin Cécillon and Misha Schroetter
Open Edition Journals
*Open Access
The Aesthetics of Tinnitus: The Senses and Society 19(1) special issue
Edited by Marie Thompson
Routledge
At the Crossroads of the Senses: The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism
By Polina Dimova
Penn State University Press
Digital Touch
By Carey Jewitt and Sara Price
Polity
Books of Note 2023
Sensorial Investigations: A History of the Senses in Anthropology, Psychology, and Law
by David Howes
Penn State University Press
Worlds of Sense: Exploring the senses in history and across cultures
Constance Classen
Routledge
Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses
Edited by D. Graham Burnett and Justin E.H. Smith
Columbia University Press
Capturing the Senses: Digital Methods for Sensory Archaeologies
Edited by Giacomo Landeschi and Eleanor Betts
Springer Cham
The Social Meaning of the Senses: The Reconstruction of Sensory Aspects of Knowledge
Edited by Paul Eisewicht, Ronald Hitzler, and Lisa Schäfer
Springer
Stigma: Marking Skin in the Early Modern World
Edited by Katherine Dauge-Roth and Craig Koslofsky
Penn State University Press
Elixir: A Parisian Perfume House and the Quest for the Secret of Life
by Theresa Levitt.
Harvard University Press
Visual Pedagogies: Concepts, Cases and Practices
Edited by Carolina Cambre, Edna Barromi-Perlman, and David Herman Jr.
Brill
Towards a Sociology of Selfies: The Filtered Face
By Carolina Cambre and Christine Lavrence
Routledge
Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
By James Bridle
Macmillan
Sense-It! : Insights into Multisensory Design
By Lois Frankel
Open Library
*Open Access
What’s That Smell: A Philosophy of the Olfactory
By Simon Hajdini
MIT Press
Apprendre les sens, apprendre par les sens. Anthropologie des perceptions sensorielles
By Vincent Battesti and Joël Candau
Petra
Sensibles ethnographies. Décalages sensoriels et attentionnels dans la recherce anthropologique
By Sisa Calapi, Helma Korzybska, Marie Mazzella di Bosco, and Pierre Peraldi-Mittelette
Petra
Just Beyond Listening: Essays of Sonic Encounter
By Michael C. Heller
University of California Press
The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography
Edited by Phillip Vannini
Routledge
Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design
By Charlotte Ribeyrol, Matthew Winterbottom, and Madeline Hewitson
Ashmolean Museum
The Sensorium of the Drone and Communities
By Kathrin Maurer
The MIT Press
*Open Access
Tangible Territory Journal Issue 6
Edited by Tereza Stehlikova
The Senses in Interior Design: Sensorial Expressions and Experiences
edited by John Potvin, Marie-Ève Marchand, and Benoit Beaulieu
Manchester University Press
Un Mundo de Sensaciones: siglos VIII al XVII (A world of sensations: 8th to 17th centuries)
Edited by Gerardo Rodriguez with a Foreword by David Howes
National University of Mar del Plata
*Open Access
Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice
By Mark Peter Wright
Bloomsbury
The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, 4th Edition
By Juhani Palasmaa
Wiley
Sentimental Empiricism: Politics, Philosophy, and Criticism in Postwar France
By Davide Panagia
Fordham University Press
Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840
By Michael J. Hatch
Penn State University Press
The Skills and Ethics of Professional Touch: From Theory to Practice
By Taina Kinnunen, Jaana Parviainen, and Anna Haho
Palgrave MacMillan
Race and Multimodality: Multimodality and Society Special Issue
Edited by Sachi Sekimoto and Christopher Brown
Sage Journals
*Free and/or Open Access
Senses with/out Subjects; Special Issue of American Literature
Edited by Erica Fretwell and Hsuan L. Hsu
American Literature, Duke University Press
Ways of Eating: Exploring Food Through History and Culture
By Benjamin A. Wurgraft and Merry I. White
University of California Press
Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives
By William Tullett
Bloomsbury Academic
*Open Access
L’expérience sensible
Edited by Camille Chamois, Quentin Deluermoz et Hervé Mazurel
L’Homme: Revue française d’anthropologie
Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia
By Kelvin E.Y. Low
Cambridge University Press
Sensing Disaster: Local Knowledge and Vulnerability in Oceania
By Matthew Lauer
University of California Press
Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape
By Jim Sykes and Julia Suzanne Byl
University of California Press
The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage
By Christy Spackman
University of California Press
Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France
By Cheryl Krueger
University of Toronto Press
Ecology, History and the Senses: Journal of Architecture Special Issue
Edited by Deljana Iossifova and Doreen Bernath
Journal of Architecture
*Partial Open Access Content Available
Music and the Senses: Nineteenth-Century Contexts Special Issue
Edited by Dane Stalcup
Nineteenth-Century Contexts, T&F Online
*Partial Open Access Content Available
Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats
Edited by Hannah Gould and Gwyn McClelland
Penn State University Press
Nosetalgia: kunstlicht 44 (2/3)
Edited by Lisa Marie Sneijder
Kunstlicht
Radiophilia
By Carolyn Birdsall
Bloomsbury
Wild Track: Sound, Text and the Idea of Birdsong
By Seán Street
Bloomsbury
Uncurating Sound: Knowledge with Voice and Hands
Salomé Voegelin
Bloomsbury
Food in Memory and Imagination: Space Place, and Taste
Edited by Beth Forrest and Greg de St Maurice
Bloomsbury
The Cultural Politics of Food, Taste, and Identity: A Global Perspective
Edited by Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz
Bloomsbury
Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy
Edited by Gabriele Ferretti and Brian Glenney
Routledge
Atmosphären-Äesthetik: Die Verflochtenheit von Natur, Kunst und Kultur (Atmosphere Aesthetics: The Interconnectedness of Nature, Art, and Culture
By Zhuofei Wang
Verlag Karl Alber
Art of Sound: Creativity in Film Sound and Electroacoustic Music
By Andrew Knight-Hill and Emma Margetson
Routledge
Gut Knowledges: Culinary Performance and Activism in the Post-Truth Era
By Kristin Hunt
Routledge
The Metamorphosis of Greek Cuisine: An Ethnography of Deli Foods, Restaurant Smells, and Foodways of Crisis
By Nafsika Papacharalampous
Routledge
The Senses and Society, Volume 18, Issue 2: Special Issue on Affective Technotouch
Edited by Amelia DeFalco and Luna Dolezal
Routledge
*Open Access Articles Available
The Atmospheric City
By Mikkel Bille and Siri Schwabe
Routledge
The Touch of the Present: Educational Encounters, Aesthetics, and the Politics of the Senses
By Sharon Todd
SUNY Press
Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies
By Helmi Järviluoma and Lesley Murray
Routledge
Techniques of Hearing: History, Theory and Practices
Edited by Michael Schillmeier, Robert Stock, and Beate Ochsner
Routledge
Literature and the Senses
Edited by Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson
Oxford University Press
*Open Access
Food History: A Feast of the Senses in Europe, 1750 to the Present
Edited by Sylvie Vabre, Martin Bruegel, and Peter J. Atkins
Routledge
Toward an Aisthetics of the Victorian Novel: Senses and Sensations
By Nadine Böhm-Schnitker
Routledge
Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rainforest
By Alice Rudge
University of Nebraska Press
Invisible Architecture: The experience of place through smell
Anna Barbara and Anthony Perliss
FrancoAngeli
*Open Access
Aural Diversity
Edited by John L. Drever and Andrew Hugill
Routledge
Capitalism and the Senses
Edited by Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman
University of Pennsylvania Press
Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell
By Xuelei Huang
Cambridge University Press
Preface to the Chinese translation by David Howes
TT Journal Issue 5
edited by Tereza Stehlikova
Kinaesthesia in the Psychology, Philosophy and Culture of Human Experience
By Roger Smith
Routledge
SMELL
Edited by Andreas Philippopolous-Mihalopoulos, Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta, and Andrea Pavoni
University of Westminster Press
HEAR
Edited by Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta, Andrea Pavoni, and Andreas Philippopolous-Mihalopoulos
University of Westminster Press
Feltness: Research-Creation, Socially Engaged Art, and Affective Pedagogies
By Stephanie Springgay
Duke University Press
The Sensory Studies Manifesto: Tracking the Sensorial Revolution in the Arts and Human Sciences
By David Howes
University of Toronto Press
Atmospheres and Shared Emotions
Edited by Dylan Trigg
Routledge
Ambiance, Tourism, and the City
Edited by Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros, Daniel Paiva, and Daniel Malet Calvo
Routledge
Virtual Book Exhibition at Uncommon Senses IV Conference (May 2023)
Books of Note 2023
If there is a book you think might be appropriate for this list, please send news of it (including a link to the relevant page on the publisher’s website) to senses@concordia.ca
