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John Demos

As the long skein of historians’ interest continues to unwind – from its once dominant focus on politics and warfare, to the successively ‘new’ fields of intellectual, social and cultural history – the newest of the new is the senses. Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell: each has a history, and each has beckoned to scholars for at least a decade.

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John Demos is the author of several books about colonial America, and is completing a study of witch-hunts. He teaches at Yale.

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