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Description of  Dissensuous Modernism: Women Writers, the Senses, and Technology

Placing women writers at the center of the sensory and technological experimentation that characterized the modernist movement, Dissensuous Modernism shows how women of the era challenged gendered narratives that limited their power and agency and waged dissent through their radical sensuous writing. Allyson DeMaagd critiques an overemphasis among modernist writers and generations of researchers on the masculine senses of sight and sound, shifting the conversation toward the feminine senses of smell, taste, and touch. These senses, long considered lower, were explored by writers such as H.D., Mina Loy, Virginia Woolf, and Elizabeth Bowen, as DeMaagd demonstrates through detailed close readings of their lesser-studied novels. DeMaagds analysis shows how these women incorporated technology in their work to reunify the senses or to draw attention to the destructive disunity of the senses, highlighting the subversive potential of sensory integration. Read more