Where to begin in Smell Studies

Interested in Smell Studies? The following list of books/articles represents foundational texts in the field that will help you start to understand what Smell Studies is all about.

A list of foundational texts in the field of Smell Studies

Barwich, A. S. Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind. First Harvard University Press paperback edition, Harvard University Press, 2022.

Bradstreet, Christina. Scented Visions: Smell in Art, 1850-1914, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022.

Classen, Constance, et al. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. Routledge, 1994.

Corbin, Alain. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Picador, 1994.

Drobnick, Jim, editor. The Smell Culture Reader. English ed, Berg, 2006.

Friedman, Emily C. Reading Smell in Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Bucknell University Press ; Copublished with Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

Henshaw, Victoria, editor. Designing with Smell: Practices, Techniques and Challenges. Routledge, 2018.

Herz, Rachel, editor. The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell. Harper Perennial, 2008.

Howes, David, and Constance Classen. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. Routledge, 2014.

Howes, David. The Sensory Studies Manifesto. University of Toronto Press, 2022.

Keller, Andreas, and Benjamin D. Young, editors. Theoretical Perspectives on Smell. ROUTLEDGE, 2023.

KETTLER, ANDREW. SMELL OF SLAVERY: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World. CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2022.

Lange, Christian and Adam Bursi. Islamic Sensory History. Brill Academic Pub, 2024.

Muchembled, Robert, and Susan Pickford. Smells: A Cultural History of Odours in Early Modern Times. English Edition, Polity, 2020.

Reinarz, Jonathan. Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell. University of Illinois Press, 2014.

Rindisbacher, Hans J. The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature. University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Stewart, Jude. Revelations in Air: A Guidebook to Smell. Penguin, 2021.

Tullett, William. Smell in Eighteenth-Century England: A Social Sense. First edition, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Young, Benjamin. Stinking Philosophy! Smell Perception, Cognition, and Consciousness, MIT Press, 2024.