Gendering the Senses

Open Session.

The senses are not simply biological or chemical; they are also socially organised. What individuals perceive about their surroundings through their senses, how they are permitted to express sensory experience, and whose sensory presence is deemed appropriate in a given space are all shaped by prevailing gender norms. All those vary from culture to culture, from place to place, as different genders may form different emotions attached to senses in different cultural settings, e.g., emotions of migrant women or queer individuals experiencing different ways of looking or voicing. This panel thus aims to draw attention to sustained cross-cultural analyses of gender as a structuring principle of sensory regimes.

This session will discuss how gender, including but not limited to binary categories, organises sensory regimes across different cultural contexts. It asks how women, men, and queer individuals are differentially positioned within structures of looking and being looked at, of sounding and being silenced, of touching and being touched, of occupying or being excluded from sensory environments, or of how certain smells can be nostalgic or alerting. These distinctions are not merely cultural curiosities but are mechanisms through which gender inequality is reproduced, embodied, and sometimes resisted.

This panel welcomes empirical and theoretical submissions engaging with gendered sensory experience in any cultural or geographic context. Papers drawing on qualitative methods, ethnographic fieldwork, or cross-cultural comparative analysis are particularly encouraged.