Beloveds, I am so happy to announce that I will be curating the newly relaunched Scent & Society series for the Institute of Art and Olfaction! I’m excited to go more in-depth about subjects adjacent to my smelly work here, but that don’t quite fit into Death/Scent’s vibe. Don’t worry though, D/S will still be going forward as usual. To start things off, I will be covering some of the basics about studying scent throughout time and in other cultures, details below.
Category: Critique
The Putrid and the Divine Book Club
A few years back, after receiving several requests for more information on topics covered in the blog, I made a lengthy list of over 50 books to indulge our olfactive bookworms. In retrospect, that list was a bit daunting. At first, I was planning to just do an updated tighter edit of that list but…
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Started My PhD
So I rarely go off on tangents here, but given the number of questions I’ve received about my PhD since starting the blog, I thought it might be a good idea to have a little sideline chat. Don’t worry, more smelly death stuff to come shortly, but here are a few words of advice from someone at…
Chatting with Courtney & Laura from I Heart Dead Things
A few weeks ago I had the privilege to sit down and have an amazing chat with Courtney Iseman and Laura Wasson over at the I Heart Dead Things Podcast we talked all things death, olfaction, and dived into some of my work that has appeared recently in Order of the Good Death and Death and the…
The Death/Scent Reading List
Over the last year I have had several requests for more information and deeper reads on subjects brought up on the blog. So after banging around my shelves a bit, here is the Death/Scent reading list. Some of them are staples of both olfactive and death literature, others are weird and wonderful deep cuts. This…
Ephemera Guide: Poetry, Revolutionary Knitting, Smells & Soap
In this month’s Ephemera post I’m boosting a melange of things that have been giving me life over this dark winter from poetry to soap, so let’s get started.
[Updated] Bottling Ghosts: Can & Should We Try to Capture the Scent of Our Dead Loved Ones?(for $650 a bottle)
In 2015 Kalain, a French start-up opened to a flurry of news articles. They claim to bottle the olfactive essence of your dead relatives for bereavement purposes. The process is simple; send them a scent infused item like a pillowcase, they work their magic, and bada bing bada boom you get a bespoke essence of your loved one Patrick…
