Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2022.2025654
Kalina Nedelcheva
{"title":"Howie Tsui, From swelling shadows, we draw our bows, curated by Justine Kohleal, The Power Plant, Toronto, September 26, 2020 - January 3, 2021","authors":"Kalina Nedelcheva","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2022.2025654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2022.2025654","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"8 1","pages":"145 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90186734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020616
Simon Leese
ABSTRACT In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.
{"title":"Connoisseurs of the senses: tobacco smoking, poetic pleasures, and homoerotic masculinity in Ottoman Damascus","authors":"Simon Leese","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020616","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"44 1","pages":"90 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84228035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020613
Beyza Uzun, Nina Macaraig
ABSTRACT Following every major meal in the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, the sultan was incensed with amber and aloewood, and every evening, an amber-and-aloewood-scented candle perfumed his bedroom, according to page-boy Albert Bobovi’s seventeenth-century account of everyday life. Talikizade’s Şehname (ca. 1596–1600) shows Süleyman the Magnificent seated with his son in his library, next to a censer emitting tendrils of smoke. Approximately sixty such censers are preserved in the Topkapı Palace Museum today. Taking as a vantage point this rich textual, pictorial and material evidence, this essay examines olfactory practices and objects employed in the imperial residence. Against the background of the Topkapı Palace’s sensescape and Islamic and Ottoman traditions in general, we discuss the prominent examples of five incense burners and three rosewater sprinklers of varying material and date, in order to arrive at conclusions about the objects’ form, function, and symbolic role in contributing to cleanliness, sacrality, as well as imperial and elite culture.
在伊斯坦布尔的托普卡比宫,每顿大餐之后,苏丹就会被琥珀和芦荟熏得浑身发香,每天晚上,他的卧室里都会点燃琥珀和芦荟香味的蜡烛,这是少年阿尔伯特·波波维在17世纪对日常生活的描述。塔利基扎德(Talikizade)的Şehname(约1596-1600年)画的是伟大的莱曼(sallyman the Magnificent)和他的儿子坐在书房里,旁边是一个散发着缕缕烟雾的香炉。今天,托普卡比耶故宫博物馆保存着大约60个这样的香炉。以这一丰富的文字、图像和物质证据为优势,本文考察了皇家住宅中使用的嗅觉实践和物体。在托普卡比皇宫的感官和伊斯兰和奥斯曼传统的背景下,我们讨论了五个香炉和三个不同材料和日期的玫瑰水喷射器的突出例子,以便得出关于物体的形式,功能和在促进清洁,神圣性以及帝国和精英文化中的象征作用的结论。
{"title":"Scenting the imperial residence: objects from the Topkapı Palace Museum collections","authors":"Beyza Uzun, Nina Macaraig","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020613","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Following every major meal in the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, the sultan was incensed with amber and aloewood, and every evening, an amber-and-aloewood-scented candle perfumed his bedroom, according to page-boy Albert Bobovi’s seventeenth-century account of everyday life. Talikizade’s Şehname (ca. 1596–1600) shows Süleyman the Magnificent seated with his son in his library, next to a censer emitting tendrils of smoke. Approximately sixty such censers are preserved in the Topkapı Palace Museum today. Taking as a vantage point this rich textual, pictorial and material evidence, this essay examines olfactory practices and objects employed in the imperial residence. Against the background of the Topkapı Palace’s sensescape and Islamic and Ottoman traditions in general, we discuss the prominent examples of five incense burners and three rosewater sprinklers of varying material and date, in order to arrive at conclusions about the objects’ form, function, and symbolic role in contributing to cleanliness, sacrality, as well as imperial and elite culture.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"40 1","pages":"68 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77707805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020629
A. Ghajarjazi
ABSTRACT In this article, I examine how Greco-Islamic and clinical medicine competed in the context of cholera epidemics in 19th-century Iran. By close-reading medical texts in this period, I sketch out this competition by focusing on how ideas about cholera prevention and treatment centered on certain understandings of the sense of smell and taste. The main argument is that while in Greco-Islamic medicine, the gustatory and olfactory experiences involving cholera and its treatment received substantial attention, in the clinical approach these experiences were methodically avoided and contained.
{"title":"The senses of cholera: transformations of gustation and olfaction in 19th-century Iran","authors":"A. Ghajarjazi","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020629","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, I examine how Greco-Islamic and clinical medicine competed in the context of cholera epidemics in 19th-century Iran. By close-reading medical texts in this period, I sketch out this competition by focusing on how ideas about cholera prevention and treatment centered on certain understandings of the sense of smell and taste. The main argument is that while in Greco-Islamic medicine, the gustatory and olfactory experiences involving cholera and its treatment received substantial attention, in the clinical approach these experiences were methodically avoided and contained.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"39 1","pages":"109 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85059986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020606
Anya H. King
ABSTRACT In the medieval Islamic world perfume occupied an important place. Both men and women used scented preparations. Much of our information about perfumery comes from the writings of physicians who both prescribed scented compounds and described their manufacture in formularies. Individual aromatic ingredients and compound perfumes were prized for their purported medicinal properties, described in terms of humoral theory. This aspect of pharmacology is well described by the physicians in their works. But some writers go beyond these limits to explore the psychological dimensions of scent, linking specific aromas to certain mental states and associating them with gender. Rules of decorum also recommended different perfumes according to the identity of the user. The creation of perfumes in the medieval Islamic world was thus an art which combined medical, esthetic, and social considerations.
{"title":"Medieval islamicate aromatherapy: medical perspectives on aromatics and perfumes","authors":"Anya H. King","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020606","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the medieval Islamic world perfume occupied an important place. Both men and women used scented preparations. Much of our information about perfumery comes from the writings of physicians who both prescribed scented compounds and described their manufacture in formularies. Individual aromatic ingredients and compound perfumes were prized for their purported medicinal properties, described in terms of humoral theory. This aspect of pharmacology is well described by the physicians in their works. But some writers go beyond these limits to explore the psychological dimensions of scent, linking specific aromas to certain mental states and associating them with gender. Rules of decorum also recommended different perfumes according to the identity of the user. The creation of perfumes in the medieval Islamic world was thus an art which combined medical, esthetic, and social considerations.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"206 1","pages":"37 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76081891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020639
M. Eden
ABSTRACT This review explores art practice as an antidote, or counter force to stupefying and potentially depressing visual forces that like art act on us primarily through our ocular sense. These forces are accounted for here under the catch all weak-glamour, their sources are varied and multifarious: advertising, branding, social media and normative hegemonic patterns there-in that are also found in popular film, fashion and television.
{"title":"Interrogating glamour: piercing visual pleasure, an antidote to passive spectatorship","authors":"M. Eden","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020639","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This review explores art practice as an antidote, or counter force to stupefying and potentially depressing visual forces that like art act on us primarily through our ocular sense. These forces are accounted for here under the catch all weak-glamour, their sources are varied and multifarious: advertising, branding, social media and normative hegemonic patterns there-in that are also found in popular film, fashion and television.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"58 1","pages":"127 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75829062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2022.2025655
Cecily Ou
{"title":"Regina José Galindo: Ríos de Gente , produced by Maiz de vida, for the festival Libertad para el Agua, various locations including Monte Olivo, Comunidad Nuevo Montecristo, Lanquín and San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, April 15, 2021","authors":"Cecily Ou","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2022.2025655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2022.2025655","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"6 1","pages":"149 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76009394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020661
Stephen J. Casmier
{"title":"Smell and the legacy of scientific racism","authors":"Stephen J. Casmier","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020661","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"4 1","pages":"135 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90966913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2021.2020605
C. Lange
ABSTRACT The celebrated Iraqi littérateur, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255 AH/869 CE), devotes a long section of his opus magnum, The Book of the Living, to the topic of “sensation among the various classes of living things.” His observations about the wondrous qualities of the human and animal sensorium are also found elsewhere in The Book of Living and in other of his works. This article traces al-Jāḥiẓ’s sensory theory in its epistemological and ethical dimensions, by pulling together key passages on the five senses from al-Jāḥiẓ’s oeuvre. The article argues that al-Jāḥiẓ develops a characteristic sensory style that is marked not so much by his desire to elevate sight above hearing, or human rationalism over animal sensualism, but rather by his erudite conoisseurship of the natural world and by his deep and measured appreciation of the phenomenon of synesthesia. Given al-Jāḥiẓ’s exalted status in Arabic literary history, his moderate sensory style constitutes an important paradigm on which later thinkers active in the Islamic world could build.
{"title":"Al-Jāḥiẓ on the senses: sensory moderation and Muslim synesthesia","authors":"C. Lange","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2021.2020605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020605","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The celebrated Iraqi littérateur, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255 AH/869 CE), devotes a long section of his opus magnum, The Book of the Living, to the topic of “sensation among the various classes of living things.” His observations about the wondrous qualities of the human and animal sensorium are also found elsewhere in The Book of Living and in other of his works. This article traces al-Jāḥiẓ’s sensory theory in its epistemological and ethical dimensions, by pulling together key passages on the five senses from al-Jāḥiẓ’s oeuvre. The article argues that al-Jāḥiẓ develops a characteristic sensory style that is marked not so much by his desire to elevate sight above hearing, or human rationalism over animal sensualism, but rather by his erudite conoisseurship of the natural world and by his deep and measured appreciation of the phenomenon of synesthesia. Given al-Jāḥiẓ’s exalted status in Arabic literary history, his moderate sensory style constitutes an important paradigm on which later thinkers active in the Islamic world could build.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"5 1","pages":"22 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78113583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}