Uncommon Senses VI: Sensory Aesthetics, Prosthetics, Politics and Intelligence
Concordia University, Montreal
May 5-8, 2027
Call for Proposals
This will be the sixth conference in the Uncommon Senses (UCS) biennial conference series. It seeks to advance the ever-expanding, cross-disciplinary field of “sensory studies”.
The principal themes for UCS VI include:
• Sensory aesthetics: art and the senses, the aestheticization of everyday life
• Sensory prosthetics: media and other devices as extensions of the body and senses, the technologization of the sensorium
• Sensory politics: the division of the senses and distribution of the sensible along gender, class and ethnic or racialized lines, and the troubling or contestation of those lines and distributions
• Intelligence: sentience and the wisdom of the senses vs. the artificialization of intelligence and machine learning
This list is illustrative, not exhaustive
Multiple disciplines feed into sensory studies, including anthropology, geography, history, sociology, religion, education, design and rhetoric. All are welcome. The field of sensory studies may otherwise be seen as divisible into visual culture, auditory culture (or sound studies), smell culture, taste cultures, the culture of touch, disability, ecology, and research-creation (or arts-based practice).
Keynote speakers include:
• Rose Bowell is a poet, Professor of Anthropology, and holds the DSI-NRF South African Research Chair in Ocean Cultures and Heritage at Nelson Mandela University. Her talk is entitled “The Sensory Sea in a World of Secular Ocean Governance.”
• Medievalist Annette Kern-Stähler (University of Bern), co-editor of Literature and the Senses (2023) and PI of “Disgust in the Middle English Tradition,” will speak on “Sensory Surveillance and Sousveillance: A Medievalist's Perspective.”
• Cai Glover is a Deaf dance artist, choreographer, and artistic director based in Montreal. He will perform “Disordering Language: The Poetics of a Body in Movement.”
• Mark Paterson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (2007) and How We Became Sensorimotor: Movement, Measurement, Sensation (2021), among other works, and David Howes, Distinguished Research Professor (Anthropology), Concordia University, to present on “Robotic Intelligence vs. Human Sentience and Embodiment: Reconcilable or What?”
The Uncommon Senses VI conference will take place from 5-8 May 2027 at Concordia University, Montreal. It will be a hybrid event: participants can attend in person or on-line, albeit along separate parallel tracks, except in the case of the keynotes and 2-3 sessions per time period, which will be in-person and also livestreamed.
Individual papers, proposals for panels (up to three papers) as well as workshops and roundtables papers relating to any topic with a sensory studies dimension are warmly welcomed.
Proposals for art installations in one of the two gallery spaces reserved for the conference, and proposals for films or videos to be shown in the Concordia Black Box, are also invited. We attach a premium to research-creation or “arts-based practice.”
All proposals will be peer-reviewed.
• The Call for Panels, Roundtables, Workshops and Individual Papers will be posted on the Events of Note page on the Sensory Studies website on 15 October 2026 and close on 30 November 2026. Results will be announced in December 2026:
Submit an individual paper proposal: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/tvBBYsQwNR
Submit a panel proposal: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/eiU7Bmpc0t
Submit a roundtable proposal: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/96x95nMyhA
Submit a workshop proposal: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/fjhu6xPb9i
• The Call for Art Installations and Videos will be posted on the Events of Note page on the Sensory Studies website on 15 October 2026 and it too will close on 30 November 2026. Results will be announced in December 2026:
Submit an art proposal (in-studio or virtual): https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/aYVMgN19ir
Each day of the conference will be divided into five or six time periods. Each time period will consist of ten-to-twelve 90-minute sessions. Each session will be composed of 3 individual papers, or a panel, a workshop, a performance, etc.
Other events include two receptions: an Insipid Banquet (to cleanse your palate) and a sumptuous Gala Banquet as well as live performances (included in the registration fee)
• Registration will open on 15 January 2027
• Conference Fee: In-person: Regular $275; Student/Underemployed $125
On-line only: regular $65; student/underemployed $35
Organizing Committee: Sowparnika Balaswaminathan, Florian Grond, David Howes
Inquiries may be addressed to senses@concordia.ca