Sensory Anthropocene and Architecture: An Online Reading Group

Sensory experience is often regarded as anti-anthropocentric, insofar as it attributes agency to (natural) things and challenges the hegemony of modernist rationalism. However, historians of emotions and the senses have highlighted the interrelationship between the Enlightenment, emotions and the senses, thereby questioning the identification of modernity with mere rationalism. Additionally, scholars have begun to interrogate the notion of the ‘sensory Anthropocene’, suggesting that the current environmental crisis has its origins, at least in part, in a transformed Western sensorium. The reading group brings these two contrasting perspectives into dialogue to reconsider concepts such as architectural experience, atmosphere and embodiment afresh. We also hope to explore how the history of emotions and the senses might inform the study of the Anthropocene more broadly and to develop the reading group into a working group.

• Organisers: Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi and Cigdem Talu
• Starting from January 2026, the reading group will take place once every month. If interested to join, please contact us at sensoryanthropocene@gmail.com
• Please note that, preferably, participants should have some familiarity with the history of emotions and the senses, the Anthropocene or related literatures (such as New Materialism).

* The reading group draws on our respective research concerning architecture, experience and dis-ease of Anthropocene. Sara’s research is supported by the British Academy’s International Fellowships Programme.