New Publication: “Towards Multisensory Aesthetics” (October 2025)

I’m happy to share that my new article, "Towards Multisensory Aesthetics: Mundane Materiality in Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark and The Overstory," has been published in a special issue of AmLit (Vol. 5, No. 2), titled  Living and Dying in the Anthropocene: Responses in Contemporary Literature from the Western Hemisphere.

The issue has been guest edited by Dr. Brian Railsback and features contributions by Paul Worley, Jessica Cory, Ljubica Matek, Teresa Botelho, David Cross, Karoline Huber, and Sarah Marak.

The article examines how Powers’ novels use synesthetic descriptions and multisensory aesthetics to challenge anthropocentric and ocularcentric cultural narratives. By focusing on mundane materiality, it explores how the novels critique Cartesian dualism and technoliberalism, emphasizing the body’s entanglement with material and nonhuman environments.

Plowing the Dark contrasts technological escapism with embodied human experience, while The Overstory employs magical realism to highlight ecological interconnectedness and humility toward the natural world. Through these strategies, Powers reframes literature’s potential to foster embodied awareness and posthuman creativity, offering fresh perspectives on environmental and technological debates.

This publication is part of my broader research on literature, sensory experience, and environmental thought.