Smell and History: A Reader - Softcover

Mark M. Smith (editor)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1946684686 ISBN 13: 9781946684684

Publisher: West Virginia University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Smell and History collects many of the most important recent essays on the history of scent, aromas, perfumes, and ways of smelling. With an introduction by Mark M. Smith―one of the leading social and cultural historians at work today and the preeminent champion in the United States of the emerging field of sensory history―the volume introduces to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to historians of all fields the richness, relevance, and insightfulness of the olfactory to historical study.

Ranging from antiquity to the present, these ten essays, most of them published since 2003, consider how olfaction and scent have shaped the history of medicine, gender, race-making, class formation, religion, urbanization, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization; how habits and practices of smelling informed ideas about the Enlightenment, modernity, and memory; how smell shaped perceptions of progress and civilization; and how people throughout history have used smell as a way to organize categories and inform worldviews.

About this title

About the Author

Mark M. Smith is Carolina Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Review of Books, and he serves as the general editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sensory History.

From the Back Cover

Smell and History collects many of the most important recent essays on the history of scent, aromas, perfumes, and ways of smelling. With an introduction by Mark M. Smith--one of the leading social and cultural historians at work today and the preeminent champion in the United States of the emerging field of sensory history--the volume introduces to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to historians of all fields the richness, relevance, and insightfulness of the olfactory to historical study.

Ranging from antiquity to the present, these ten essays, most of them published since 2003, consider how olfaction and scent have shaped the history of medicine, gender, race-making, class formation, religion, urbanization, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization; how habits and practices of smelling informed ideas about the Enlightenment, modernity, and memory; how smell shaped perceptions of progress and civilization; and how people throughout history have used smell as a way to organize categories and inform worldviews.

Edition details

• Publisher: West Virginia University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1946684686
• ISBN 13: 9781946684684
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276