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
Eating the Urban Wild: Food and Foraging in Montreal
By Natalie Doonan
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Sense of Touch: Shokkan and Sensory Exploration in Japanese Art
Edited by Akiko Takesue
ROM
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine
Edited by William J. Buxton
University of Alberta Press
Olfactory Worldmaking
By Hsuan L. Hsu
University of Minnesota Press
*Open Access
Senses of Mourning: Moharram Performances in Shiʿi Iran from the Qajar to the Covid Era
By Babak Rahimi
University of Pennsylvania Press
Quantum Coasts, Oceanic Worlds and Cultural Heritage in Africa
By Rosabelle Boswell
Springer
A Dialogue of the Senses: Designing Interaction with the Body in Mind
By Sile O’Modhrain
MIT Press
*Open Access
Sonic UX: The Science of Sound in User Experience Research
By KC Collins
MIT Press
Disenchanting the Senses: Sulfuric Discourse and the World System
By Andrew Kettler
Cambridge University Press
Outdoor Singing in Modern Britain: A Sensory and Emotional History
By Abbi Flint and Clare Hickman
Cambridge University Press
Silent Histories: Deafness in Early Modern England
By Rosamund Oates
Cambridge University Press
Hungry for Peace: Food Peacebuilding in an Entangled World
By Elaine Mei Lien Pratley
Edinburgh University Press
Making Common Sense: On the Construction of the Obvious from Antiquity to AI
By Michael North
Stanford University Press
Public Acoustics: The Sound of Society in Ancien Régime Literature
By Ellen R. Welch
University of Pennsylvania Press
Talking Machine Empires: Phonograph Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean during the Acoustic Era
By Sergio Ospina Romero
Oxford University Press
Musical Listening: Aesthetic Experience as Opening to the World
By Julian Johnson
Oxford University Press
From Garum to Mole: Sauces and Identity in the Western World
Edited by Andrew Donnelly, Beth M. Forrest, and Deirdre Murphy
Oxford University Press
Sensing Life: The Social Organisation of the Senses in Interaction
Edited by Will Gibson, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, Dirk vom Lehn
Routledge
The Sensory Terroir of Crossmodal Art: Connecting the Senses Through Wine and Sound
By Jo Burzynska
Routledge
The Sensory Child of Contemporary Cinema: Sight, Sound, Touch
By Nonie May
Routledge
The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Criminology
Edited by Kate Herrity, Kanupriya Sharma, Janani Umamaheswar, and Jason Warr
Routledge
Skateboarding and the Senses: Skills, Surfaces, and Spaces
By Sander Hölsgens and Brian Glenney
Routledge
Material Interculturality: Making Sense with Everyday Objects
By Cristina Ros i Solé
Routledge
Scented Spaces: Creating Smellscapes in Artistic and Architectural Practices
By Jieling Xiao
Routledge
Creating Sensory Spaces: The Architecture of the Invisible, 2nd Edition
By Barbara Erwine
Routledge
Tasting Religious Thought and Experience in Late-Medieval English Literature
By Caleb D. Molstad
Bloomsbury
The Haptic Arts: How Touch Shapes our Place in the World
By Ronald Schleifer
Bloomsbury
The Empire of the Ear: Music, Race, and the Sonic Architecture of Colonial Morocco
By Samuel Llano
Oxford University Press
Sensational Rhythms of the Ineffable: Ethical Affects in Sikh Sabad Kïrtan
By Inderjit N. Kaur
Oxford University Press
Silence: A Literary History
By Kate McLoughlin
Oxford University Press
In the Music Museum: Seeing, Hearing, and Understanding Historical Instruments
By Robert Adelson
Oxford 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
The Intimacy of Images: Saints, Death, and Devotion to La Santa Muerte in Oaxaca
By Myriam Lamrani
University of Texas Press
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 Circulations: Music, Modernism, and the Politics of Knowledge
Edited by Emily I. Dolan, Emily MacGregor, and Arman Schwartz
University of Pennsylvania Press
A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames
By Brendan Keogh
MIT Press
Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change the Way We Listen
By Siôn Parkinson
Sternberg Press
Linguistic Synesthesia: A Meta-analysis
By Bodo Winter and Francesca Strik-Lievers
Cambridge University Press
Embodied Epistemology and Rigorous Historical Method
By Lauren Mancia
Cambridge University Press
Affective Touching: Neurobiology and Technological Applications
By Mark Paterson
Cambridge University Press
Onomatopoeia: The Colourful World of Sounds
By Lívia Kötvélyessy
Cambridge University Press
Aesthetic Knowledge
By Jon Robson
Cambridge University Press
Race, Taste, and the Grape: South African Wine from a Global Perspective
By Paul Nugent
Cambridge University Press
Beyond the Visual: Multisensory modes of beholding art
Edited by Ken Wilder and Aaron McPeake
UCL Press
The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Mastery, and Pleasure in the Anglo Caribbean
By Kim Hall
University of Pennsylvania Press
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
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
Virtual Book Exhibition at Uncommon Senses IV Conference (May 2023)
Virtual Book Exhibition at Uncommon Senses V Conference (May 2025)
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
