“The sensorium is a fascinating focus for cultural studies,” wrote Walter J. Ong in “The Shifting Sensorium” (1991). Ong’s words heralded the arrival of sensory studies, an interdisciplinary field of inquiry which takes a cultural approach to the study of the senses and a sensory approach to the study of culture. Sensory Studies has galvanized much exciting and provocative research and experimentation in the humanities and social sciences and visual and performing arts over the past three decades. Uncommon Senses 2 aims to take stock of the many advances in sensuous scholarship and art practice since the first Uncommon Senses conference at Montreal’s Concordia University in 2000.

The conference is organized around three broad topic areas:

• Crossing Sensory Borders in the Arts: The Rise of Multisensory Aesthetics and New Media Art
• Alternative Pedagogies: The Education of the Senses
• Law and the Regulation of the Senses

Plenary speaker: Caroline A. Jones (MIT), author of The Global Work of Art: World’s Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of Experience (2016) and Eysesight Alone: Clement Greenberg’s Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses (2005), and editor of Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology and Contemporary Art (2006) among other works.

Uncommon Senses II is hosted by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. It is co-sponsored by the Centre for Sensory Studies (CSS), Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department of Art Education, Milieux Institute, Concordia University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses, and the Hexagram Network for Research-Creation in Media Art, Design, Digital Culture and Technology, with additional financial support from the Office of the Dean, Arts and Science. The organizers also gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA).

For registration and other information see the page dedicated to the conference at www.lawandthesenses.org

Inquiries may be addressed to senses@concordia.ca