Viktoria von Hoffman
Viktoria’s research interests cover the social and cultural history of the lower senses (taste and touch) in early modern Europe. She has published extensively on the history of taste, including two monographs on taste (Goûter le monde. Une histoire culturelle du goût à l’époque moderne, 2013, and From Gluttony to Enlightenment. The World of Taste in Early Modern Europe, 2016) and one co-edited volume on disgust (Le Dégoût, Histoire, langage, esthétique et politique d’une émotion plurielle, with M. Delville and A. Norris, 2015). She is now engaged in a new project that explores the history of touch through the lens of Italian Renaissance anatomy.
Her current research aims to uncover the rich variety of discourses and practices involving touch as an instrument to produce knowledge about the body in early modern medicine. Using a varied collection of theoretical medical texts, along with printed and archival documents more closely linked to the day to day uses of touch in healing practices – such as records of autopsies and dissections, observations for diagnosis, diaries, letters, and notebooks kept by medical students – The Anatomy of Touch examines the ways in which the sense of touch was theorized in the past, as well as the part played by haptic experience and technologies of touch in the early modern study of nature.
