Deadline: December 1st 2024
Contact: Manon Raffard, Affiliated post-doctoral researcher, Université de Bourgogne
Email: manon.raffard@gmail.com

Call for ASLE 2025 Conference Virtual Panel

The panel proposes to explore intersections between atmospherics, olfactory perception, and socio-environmental inequality. As H. L. Hsu puts it, “the social construction of smell informs— and is informed by— the social construction of environmental risk perception” (Smell of Risk, NYU Press, 2020, 6). Individual and collective experiences of atmospheric odor (whether pleasant or unpleasant) indeed influence social behaviors and representations. Historically, in the West, the long-standing belief in miasma theory led to considerations of space in which apparent malodor is a legitimate motive for socio-environmental oppression: individuals and groups perceived as malodorous were to work and live in polluted, degraded spaces. Globally, both atmospheric and bodily malodor tends to link olfactory disturbance and pollution to environmental, personal, and ethical failures, as well as feelings of disgust, fear, and hatred. This allowed for atmospheric smells to become devices of slow and acute forms of violence, particularly in contexts of socio-political unrest and social control. However, all is not glum: recent perspectives (in the arts in particular) have highlighted how atmospheric-olfactory experiences can act as essential components of embodied and critical socio-environmental thought and, oftentimes, resistance. Considering these introductory elements, the panel’s main objectives are to contextualize and interrogate historical and contemporary representations and uses of atmospheric smells as tools used to create, enforce, and resist socio-environmental inequalities.

The panel is open to all disciplines of the arts and humanities. We particularly welcome perspectives from historically understudied areas and time periods, as well as interdisciplinary and critical presentations.

Please send a 200 word abstract and 150-word biographical statement to Manon Raffard (see contact above) by December 1st 2024. Enquiries welcome. If selected, the panel will be online.

Posted on October 4, 2024