Important notice: This is an English speaking course, a premodel for a joint YUFE-course in the near future, hopefully winter 21/22. During this term, winter 20/21, you have to choose both seminars as obligatory combination for module 4 ⇐4 semester weekly hours).
80% of the course will be held synchrone via ZOOM (incl. Resources on StudIP and Moodle); 20% will be done outdoor in small teams!
When you wake up in the morning, you may hear the birds or the alarm clock, then you may switch on the radio, while you smell the shower gel, the fresh coffee or the toasted bread. Without being conscious of this sensual life setting, the sounds and smells are important for our mood or location in time and space. To know how significant smells and sounds are in social life, in your culture, you just have to imagine the reaction when you hear the police siren on your way to work.
In this introductary course we will explore the Anthropology of the Senses, and which analytical approaches have become prominent in this interdisciplinary field. For example, childhood memories of sounds and smells are quite various, but imagine how easily you might remember a certain experience while smelling something and how easily you may involve someone else to your memory when telling the story connected to this event.
What you recognize as a beautiful sound, might completely vary in other societies. It is our socialisation to rate smells or sounds, to say this smells ugly or not, this sound is nerve-shattering or not. What could be reasons for those differences? And by which rules or motives are these sensual meaning systems of our culture-s organized?
It has become central in the field of sensory studies to use our human body with all the different sensory potentials. How does it work to focus on only one sense? What happens if you follow the daily sounds and try to document them? Whereas audiotechnologies offer a lot, it might be more challenging to document smell. How can we approach our experience of various smells and represent them, as they are even more volatile than sounds?
With these questions in mind we will also work practically by conducting sound- and smellwalks outdoor in small groups, immersing into sound- and smellscapes of specific environments including COVID19-circumstances. How do we share this sensual experience with others, how can we document and represent the sound- and smellscapes we have discovered individually or in small teams?
As this course is taught as a premodel for the YUFE-program, we will already meet online with students and teachers of the University of Eastfinland during 3 sessions in January (via Zoom, StudIP & Moodle). We will share videolectures and theoretical texts in order to discuss our first insights.
At the end of the seminar, you will work on your ideas which have been developped throughout the practical and the theoretical units of the course ⇐“Prüfungsleistung“). E.g. you may edit a sound- or smell-diary, you may create a photo story of your smell- or soundscape, a podcast, a painting, or a conception for a guided walking tour – we are looking forward to your creativity how to document and represent the volatile world of sounds and smells.
Requirements:
Active Participation (6 CP)
3 CP: Seminar 1 (Dr. C. Weißköppel): Introduction to sensory studies incl. smellscapes
+
3 CP: Seminar 2 (Dr. J. G. Holzscheiter): Introduction to sound studies incl. soundscapes
+
3 CP: Graded work ⇐Prüfungsleistung):
Your individual or teamwork on A. soundscapes oder B. smellscapes or C. a combination of both, including a written paper (5 pages) commenting on your mediaproject up to end of March 2021, which shall be finally presented during a joint zoom-session with our partners from UEF in mid of May 2021.
Total 9 CP.
Contact: cweisskoeppel@uni-bremen.de,
luc@uni-bremen.deRecommended books:
Braun, K. et al. (Hg. 2017): Kulturen der Sinne. Zugänge zur Sensualität der Sozialen Welt. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Drobnick, J. (Hg. 2006): The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford und New York: Berg, S. 107-117.
Elliott, Denielle/ Culhane, Dara (Hg. 2017): A Different Kind of Ethnography. Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Pink, Sarah (2009): Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles: Sage.
Sterne, Jonathan (ed. 2012): The Sound Studies Reader. London: Routledge.