Sensory Anthropocene and Architecture

sensory anthropocene and architecture:
an online reading group

Organisers:
Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi, University of Exeter
Cigdem Talu, McGill University

CONTACT:
sensoryanthropocene@gmail.com

The readings and zoom link will be sent to the reading group participants by email.

MEETINGS

SESSION 1

11 FEB 2026
4 PM CET

Otter, Christopher. “The Sensory Anthropocene: Disgust, Ecological Sanitation, and Planetary Ecologies.” Environmental Humanities 17, no. 1 (2025): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-11543463.

Morgan, Benjamin. “Introduction” in The Outward Mind: Materialist Aesthetics in Victorian Science and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

SESSION 2

TBD

SENSORY ANTHROPOCENE AND ARCHITECTURE: An Online Reading Group

Sensory experience is often regarded as anti-anthropocentric, insofar as it attributes agency to (natural) things and challenges the hegemony of modernist rationalism. However, historians of emotions and the senses have highlighted the interrelationship between the Enlightenment, emotions and the senses, thereby questioning the identification of modernity with mere rationalism. Additionally, scholars have begun to interrogate the notion of the ‘sensory Anthropocene’, suggesting that the current environmental crisis has its origins, at least in part, in a transformed Western sensorium. The reading group brings these two contrasting perspectives into dialogue to reconsider concepts such as architectural experience, atmosphere and embodiment afresh. We also hope to explore how the history of emotions and the senses might inform the study of the Anthropocene more broadly and to develop the reading group into a working group.

Starting from February 2026, the reading group will take place once every month.
If interested to join, please contact us at sensoryanthropocene@gmail.com

Please note that, preferably, participants should have some familiarity with the history of emotions and the senses, the Anthropocene, and related literatures (such as New Materialism).

For more information, see https://healthscapes.co.uk/sensory-anthropocene-and-architecture-an-online-reading-group/

* The reading group draws on our respective research concerning architecture, experience and dis-ease of Anthropocene. Sara's research is supported by the British Academy's International Fellowships Programme.

Poster image source: Matrakçı Nasuh, Menazilname, 1537, folio 29b.

SESSION 1

11 FEB 2026
4 PM CET