Coming to Our Senses

Abstract

Ours is a nearly sense-less profession. The JAH survey, heavily weighted toward reading as a source of historical understanding, did not invite mention of enlightening paintings, musical compositions, architectural works, culinary experiences, dance performances, or, except through one question about movies, other transformative sensory encounters. Few respondents objected to these omissions. None answered the question addition to personal fulfillment, what value or worth do you experience in doing history? with a comment such as It has increased my ability to see, hear, and otherwise sense things, thereby making me better at my craft and more adequately equipped to serve my community.' I have taught in three university history departments and one art school. In the tenor of intellectual life, the differences between these four institutions were small. In what they proffered to the senses, the difference between the history departments and the art school was vast. Part of the difference was, of course, visual. Student and faculty works animate every square foot of usable art school space, competing for attention with a resident community that favors purple hair and personally sculpted clothing. But in addition, because things get made at an art school, its sensory environment resembles a factory more than an office. Going to work means encountering the smell of linseed oil, the acrid taste of the fumes produced by etching fluids, the heat of the foundry, and the sounds of table saws and kinetic sculpture. In contrast, history department facilities conveyed the message that sense organs were pedagogically irrelevant except insofar as they made possible such activities as reading books and listening to lectures. Aside from the use of slides and other audiovisual aids, sensory experiences noticeable in and of themselves usually entered classrooms as unwelcome intrusions: the clangor of nearby construction, glaring sunlight, flatulent students. What is true of historians' professional habitats is also true of the books they write and assign. In preparation for writing this essay I searched for memorable and analytically significant smells, tastes, sights, sounds, and tactile sensations in sixteen American history textbooks written over the past forty years. I restricted my search to the twentieth-century sections of the texts.2 This search led to three conclusions.