Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature Travelling Seminar: Sensing History Around 1816: Body and Sensation in the Long Eighteenth Century

May 21

Dre Elizabeth Kukorelly, UNIGE

Prof. Simon Swift, UNIGE

Prof. Vincent Barras, UNIL

Dr Rowan Boyson, King's College, London

Sensing History Around 1816: Body and Sensation in the Long Eighteenth Century. Recent critical studies of the Romantic period have started to examine the ways in which the senses, sensation, and the body are able to capture aspects of historical experience that evade the grasp of more traditional intellectual approaches to historiography. Drawing on a rich array of recent work into the various anthropologies, as well as the medical discourses of the long eighteenth century, such work also builds on the pioneering work into the writing of history by figures including Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau. The life of the body can give us a different picture of forms of materialism in the period; at the same time, attention to sensation can answer the call of Annales historians for a history of long duree. At the intersection of two important anniversaries, this stage of the travelling workshop will allow doctoral students to get to grips with this shift in the historiography and science of our period. It will be led by two scholars who have significant expertise in the fields of bodily sensation and medical humanities, while offering participants to think about the ways in which this important theme of contemporary criticism enables the building of bridges between the sciences and the humanities. We will take as our focus the sense of history around 1816: the role of smell in Percy Shelley, and the place of vitalism in late Enlightenment science might equally feature in our discussions. But we will also remain alive to another important anniversary, commemorating a text and author that have been foundational to the new approach to history in our period: for 2016 marks 50 years since the publication of Foucault's Les Mots et Les Choses.

Genève

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