Course information

This module explores the role of the senses in European visual culture, architecture, and science from the seventeenth to early ninteenth century. It challenges the historical privileging of sight by examining how artists, scientists, architects, and writers engaged with touch, smell, hearing, and even taste. Starting with depictions of the five senses and optical illusions, the course moves to the rise of the sublime and picturesque, two new aesthetic categories rooted in sensory experience. Weekly topics include: scientific instruments; art exhibitions and criticism; automata; sensory disability; manipulation of the senses for artistic, medical, and surveillance purposes.