The SENSIS project is organising two panels around sensory history at the 35. Deutschen Orientalistentag taking place at the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen.

New Perspectives on the History of the Senses and of Emotion in the Islamic World 1 & 2 (09.09.2025)

These two panels explore new avenues of research in the emerging fields of Islamic sensory history and the history of emotions in the Islamic world. The “sensory turn” that has enriched many areas of the humanities and social sciences in recent years hinges on the notion that sensory perception, like emotion, is not only a physical but also a cultural act. Accordingly, papers in these two panels study the ways in which different historical, geographical, social, and intellectual contexts have calibrated the ways in which Muslims and non-Muslim inhabitants of the Islamicate world have experienced and understood sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Several of the papers connect to the Handbook of Islamic Sensory (3 vols., Brill: 2024–) and the ERC- and NWO-funded research project SENSIS housed at Utrecht University. All papers demonstrate the potential of sensory studies to help historians of the Islamic world write about the past in novel and incisive ways.

Panel 1: Sensory Connoisseurship and Disgust (12:30-15:30)

Chair: Christian Lange

Yuck! The Disgusting and Repulsive in Pre-modern Arabic Food Culture: A Sensory Approach, Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Free University Berlin)

Senses and Sensitivities: Scatology and Disgust in Premodern Arabic Literature, Asmaa Essakouti (University of Münster)

Sensory Connoisseurship in the Aleppo Room, Suzanne Compagnon (Utrecht University)

Sensory Encounters in Literary Urban Descriptions of Safavid Isfahan, Mira de Boose (Utrecht University)

Panel 2: Acoustic and Multisensory Phenomena (16:00-18:00)

Chair: Isabel Toral-Niehoff

Rhythms of Looms: Aurality in Medieval Islamic Textile Production, Corinne Mühlemann (University of Bern)

A Shiʿitization of the senses? The sensorium in al-Majlisī’s Adornment of the Pious and Oceans of Lights, Christian Lange (Utrecht University)

Reforming the Senses: Religious Conversion and Sensorial Culture in Safavid Iran, Yusuf Ünal (Utrecht University)

Forgotten Sounds of Muslim Nationalism: Poetry, Music, and Mass Mobilization in Late Colonial India, Gianni Sievers (Utrecht University)