Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Conference, Bristol, 2-5 July 2025: Seminar on “Sound and the Senses”
In The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (1999), Bruce Smith illustrated the interconnectedness of sound and place through exploring the distinctive sound signatures of the early modern playhouse and other spaces, and how inhabiting such spaces connected to the embodied experiences of hearing, listening and voicing. Twenty-five years after its publication, Smith’s attention to the aural and oral landscapes continues to influence and provoke a range of debate about the early modern soundscape, how we uncover the sounds of the past, and the myriad ways in which sound acts on the senses.
This seminar aims to interrogate the interconnections between sound and the senses and how these interconnections create a sense of connectedness or disconnect. In examining sound as a multisensory experience, it asks 1) how does environment regulate the experience of sound within particular spaces? 2) what forms of knowledge are created and communicated through sound? 3) how does our attention to the historical phenomenology of sound and hearing enrich our understanding of early modern culture and society? 4) How did early modern people understand sound’s function in creating communities of fellow-feeling 5) How does attention to the ecological, temporal and epistemological factors that inform sensory experience feed into our sense of sound and hearing? 6) Can sound ecologies be exclusionary and break connections instead of being generative?
Seminar Leaders: Katie Bank (Birmingham); Rachel Willie (Liverpool John Moores)
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OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
nemos (December 17, 2024). Seminar “Sound and the Senses” NEMoS. Retrieved November 11, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12xy3