Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History

Smith (How Race is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses) presents a controversial thesis that puts human senses in a historical context, arguing they are ""not universal but, rather, a product of place and, especially, time."" South Carolina history professor Smith directs his arguments at academics, but aims some telling shots at pop-history institutions like Civil War re-enactments and Colonial Williamsburg that inspire a ""dangerous"" sense of ""unwitting faith that these are the 'real' sounds or sights, smells, tastes of the past,"" not just in tourists but in ""many professionals, not least... some historians."" Canvassing scholarly work over the past 30 years, Smith is critical of the dominant ""great divide theory"" that privileges sight over the other senses. As such, Smith looks at the full range (one chapter for each) in politically charged historical moments, taking on, for instance, a strain of reasoning put forth by Louisiana's district attorney in Plessy v. Ferguson: ""I might not be able to see that he is black, but I can certainly smell his racial identity."" Though dry, this is an eye-, ear-, mouth- and nostril-opening primer for the relatively new field of sensory history.