Hsuan L. Hsu and Olfactory Worldmaking (online)
–
Hsuan L. Hsu shares his research into how smell reshapes human connections, and resists racial and colonial capitalist systems.
Smell is a vital, if underappreciated, medium through which we inhabit and imagine the world. In his new book Olfactory Worldmaking, Hsuan L. Hsu traces how olfactory experience communicates across visceral, material, and affective registers to offer new ways of relating, which challenge the extractive logics of racial and colonial capitalism. Blending environmental humanities, sensory studies, and critical ethnic studies, the book highlights how scent animates suppressed histories and marginalized memories.
Hsu theorizes olfaction as a speculative, reparative practice. Examining projects from historical novels, memoirs, and speculative fiction to conceptual art and experimental perfumes, he reveals how these works mobilize scent to imagine alternative ways of sensing, relating, and creating more equitably livable worlds.
Learn more about ‘Olfactory Worldmaking’, here
ABOUT HSUAN L. HSU
Hsuan L. Hsu is professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He is author of Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature; Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain’s Asia and Comparative Racialization; The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics; and Air Conditioning.
ABOUT OLFACTORY RESEARCH NOTES
Olfactory Research Notes is a lecture series presented by the Institute for Art and Olfaction that highlights important research done in the field of olfaction, directly from the scientists, researchers, academics, and artists who do it.
Related Events
When you sign up for a class or event at the IAO, you will receive an Eventbrite confirmation email which contains important information, such as materials lists or preparation instructions. Please be sure to scroll down in the email, so you see those instructions.
For online classes, you will receive the Zoom log-in information approximately 12 – 24 hours before each session begins. To avoid this going to spam, add hello@artandolfaction.com to your address book. Our online classes are recorded, and the video is available to registered attendees for 7 days after the class takes place. Because the class is recorded and can be viewed later, we do not provide refunds or transfers for online classes.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter: Click here