World Sensorium: Using the Senses to Teach the History of Exploration

This article is a teaching module that uses sensory history methodology to enrich students’ understanding of exploration, trade, and cultural exchange in the early modern period. The module addresses each sense separately in self-contained units, considering compelling historiographical questions together with investigation of primary source text and images. The primary sources include printed and manuscript works, excerpts from travel narratives, recipes, commercial works, and a collection of bark cloth samples. Each unit also offers discussion questions and suggested activities. One of the overarching goals of this module is to cultivate in students the habit of always attending to the senses as they interpret varieties of historical experience.