Sensoria

From the mating calls of chorus frogs to insect olfaction to elephant funerary rites to the memory-rich tastes of place, Sensoria offers an immersion in the sensual experiences of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling—and their interactions, combinations, and more-than-human manifestations. This shimmering volume of sensation from Humans & Nature Press proposes possibilities and practices to heighten and expand readers’ empathic imaginations and sensory awareness of the natural world through everyday experiences with nature.

Humans, along with all other creatures, are an entanglement of sensual relations, shaping and shaped by our somatic engagement with the world. The essays and poetry of Sensoria transport readers into compelling stories and ethical reflections that stretch the limits of the moral imagination, calling attention to the wondrous ways in which humans and other-than-human beings experience and perceive the world, not just through the senses but within them. By exploring the sensorium among all forms of life endowed with different kinds of consciousness and communicative abilities, this volume highlights ecologically and socially diverse ways of touching the world with mind, and touching mind with the world.

The sensory faculties are inherently about the capability of paying attention to other beings and forces that share our planet and whose lives are interwoven with our own. For each of the five senses, the contributors to Sensoria—including music composer David Rothenberg, historian of color Carolyn Purnell, bio-philosopher Andreas Weber, filmmaker Kalyanee Mam, neuroethologist Bill Hansson, travel writer and novelist Nick Hunt, and religious scholar Graham Harvey—explore and illuminate the biology and neurology of sensation as well as the imaginative possibilities for understanding the senses. This timely volume offers readers new ways of understanding relations in everyday encounters that link our inner and outer awareness—embodied experiences that shape what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, and the way these perceptions can help us to attend more closely and respectfully to the lifeworlds of other-than-human creatures.

“A collection as diverse and generative as the senses themselves. Rich in experience and insight, these writings awaken and invite. Through vibrant and compelling stories and juxtapositions, we’re called to deeper perception, embodied engagement, and right action grounded in the sensory riches of the living Earth.”—David George Haskell, biologist and two-time Pulitzer-finalist author of How Flowers Made our World, Sounds Wild and Broken, The Songs of Trees, and The Forest Unseen