Sensation! Sensory cultures and their representation in France and the Francophone world (1840–1900)
Sensation!
Sensory cultures and their representation in France and the Francophone world (1840–1900)
a symposium exploring the senses and sensation in
nineteenth-century French/Francophone studies
Friday 23 October and Saturday 24 October 2026
11am–5pm
Peter’s Hall, 119 Eaton Square, London SW1W 9AL
organisers: Susan Harrow and Ye Xu
Emile Zola Society (UK)
Where and how do we ‘sense’– and make sense of – the world both through the classic five senses and through today’s understanding of an expanded sensorium that includes breathing, proprioception, vestibularity, nocioception, and kinaesthesia? How did writers and artists, historians and scientists of the later nineteenth century and early twentieth century explore the sentient body? How did technological advances and posthuman inventions assist or hamper sentient experience? How did social class, gender, age, ethnicity, and physicality affect and inflect cultural representations of senses from the novel and poetry to medical treatises, marketing/advertising, legal frameworks, and the full range of visual cultures in the period 1840–1900.
The event is made possible by the generous support of the Ambassade de France and the 'International Fellowships' scheme of the British Academy.
Friday 23 October
Welcome to ‘Sensation!’ (Susan Harrow and Ye Xu)
11.00-12.50 Panel 1: Sensing the Body / Les sens du corps
chair: Danlu Chen
11.00–11.20 Zied SMAT (Université de Lille), ‘La respiration comme sismographe sensoriel de la physiologie zolienne à la psychologie proustienne’
11.20–11.40 Ye XU (Royal Holloway University of London), ‘Audition colorée: entre maladie dégénérative et poétique transcendante’
11.40–12.00 Samira FATTOUHY (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry), ‘Les Emmurés (1894) de Lucien Descaves: le roman des sensations ou comment représenter le réel sans le voir’
12.00–12.20 Margaret MINER (University of Illinois Chicago), ‘From Colonel Chabert to Olivier Bécaille: A Stroll through Sensory (Dis)Integration’
12.20–12.50 Discussion
1.00–1.30 Lunch
1.30–2.30 Plenary: Cheryl Krueger, ‘Une Sensation étrange: Zola's Fragrant Grotesque’ (University of Virginia, USA)
chair: Susan Harrow
2.30–3.00 Tea break
3.00-4.45 Panel 2: Sensation across the arts / La sensation à travers les arts
Chair: Chantal Morel
3.00–3.20 Isabelle LE PAPE (Ministère de la Culture, France), ‘Vertiges au musée, de Frenhofer à Bergotte’
3.20–3.40 Coraline REFORT (Technological University Dublin), ‘Expériences acoustiques, phonoscènes et cultures sensorielles du premier cinéma (1895-1910’)
3.40–4.00 Victor SAINSOT (Sciences Po), ‘L’œil infecté : sensation chromatique et anxiété bactériologique dans la critique d’art française à la fin du XIXe siècle’
4.00-4.20 Terézia GUIMARD (Slovak Academy of Sciences), ‘Les scènes de repas dans les romans d’Émile Zola, une métonymie de la vie sociale’.
4.20–4.45 Discussion
Saturday 24 October
11.00-11.55 Panel 3: Sensuality and perversity / Sensualité et perversité
Chair: Sati McKenzie
11.00-11.20 Danlu CHEN (University of Bristol), ‘The Sadomasochistic Body and Multi-sensory Experience in Zola’s ‘Pour une nuit d’amour’
11.20–11.40 Hestia ZHANG (University of Oxford), ‘Sensation Overload: Hothouse Fantasies and Sensory Excess in Zola’s La Curée’
11.40-11.55 Discussion
12.00-1.00 Plenary: Hervé Mazurel (Université de Bourgogne-Dijon, France), title TBC
Chair: Ye Xu
1.00-1.45 lunch
1.50-3.30 Panel 4: In search of sensory poetics / En quête de poétiques sensibles
Chair: Susan Harrow
1.50 -2.10 Marie-Astrid CHARLIER (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry / Institut universitaire de France), ‘Le naturalisme, une écriture à sensation’
2.10–2.30 Chloé BERR (University of Virginia), ‘Les sens dans Spirite de Théophile Gautier: vers un fantastique olfactif?’
2.30-2.50 Emmy BALDIN (McGill University), ‘Poétique de la sensation chez Marie Krysinska, Renée Vivien et Anna de Noailles’
2. 50-3.10 Elise CANTIRAN (CNRS), ‘Corps absents, sensations écrites, poétiques, épistolaires de l’altérité chez Zola, Dreiser et Crane’
3.10–3.30 Discussion
3.30–4.00 Tea break
4.00-5.00 Plenary: Hannah Thompson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK), ‘Sensations in the Museum’
Chair: William Greenslade
5.00–5.30 drinks reception