The Five Senses: Pleasure and Danger in Perception

Analyzing sensory perception as a cultural construction is a transdisciplinary endeavor connecting the humanities, biological sciences, and social sciences.  Focusing on the place of perception in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this project aims to investigate hierarchies of the senses, the senses as sites of hegemonic contest, and the contours of a social history of sensual production and reception.  Our findings will be presented as case studies in a faculty seminar, an interdisciplinary symposium involving outside contributors from the social and biological sciences, an NEH summer seminar for college und university teachers, and finally a volume of selected essays.