Mark Paterson
Mark Paterson, Ph. D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
University of Pittsburgh
1117D Cathedral of Learning
Phone: 412-624-5630 (Aug 15, 2011)
Email: paterson@pitt.edu
Mark Paterson's research is interdisciplinary and concerned with the senses, especially touch. It can be grouped into three areas:
1. Blindness, vision and touch.
A distinct strand of research into the history and philosophy of the senses is the treatment of blindness and vision impairment. The perennial fascination with blind experience by the sighted leads to an imaginary of ‘blindness’ that is perpetuated through a variety of discourses within intellectual history, accelerated since the Enlightenment. As such, treatments of blindness in philosophy and early psychology highlight the historical and contemporary relationship between vision and touch.
2. Technologies for inclusion and interaction.
As technologies and interfaces become more literally ‘touchy-feely’ and increasingly gesture-based, how might this be mobilised for assisted living, for the elderly and for the vision impaired? How are the new senses and spatialities of the body being utilised through these increasingly prevalent technologies? Touch, gesture and movement are progressively involved in mobile devices, the human-computer interface (HCI) and human-robot interactions (HRI), with implications for usability and inclusivity for groups such as the visually impaired.
3. The 'new' senses and spatialities of the body.
Alongside parallel developments in anthropology, cultural studies and elsewhere, there has been a return to the body and the senses in the social sciences. This was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis and subsequent book The Senses of Touch (Berg, 2007). One of the threads running throughout this research is the promise and problems of writing about bodily and tactile experience. The research has subsequently developed in terms of considering somatic and affective experiences in spatial contexts, but increasingly through the viscerality of the interrelated senses of kinaesthesia, proprioception and the vestibular system.
Find out more about my latest research projects and publications at http://www.sensesoftouch.co.uk.
Courses
- Society and the Environment SOC 1445
- American Environmental Rhetoric: Environmentalism and the Media COMMRC 1731
Selected Publications
Books
Paterson, M. Consumption and Everyday Life, ‘The New Sociology’ series. London: Routledge, 2005.
Paterson, M. The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies. Oxford: Berg, 2007.
Paterson, M. (In Preparation) Seeing With the Hands: A Philosophical History of Blindness. London: Reaktion, 2011
Paterson, M. & Dodge, M. (Eds., In Preparation) Touching Place, Placing Touch. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011
Articles
Paterson, M. (2009) ‘Haptic Geographies: Ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions’, Progress in Human Geography 33(6), pp. 766-788
Paterson, M. (2011) ‘More-than-visual approaches to architecture. Vision, touch, technique’, Social & Cultural Geography 12(3), pp. 263-281. Special issue ‘Practiced Architectures: Spaces, Performances, Events’, Eds. J. Jacobs and P. Merriman.
Paterson, M. (In Press) ‘Looking on darkness, which the blind do see': Empathy and insight in accounts of blindness’, Emotion, Space and Society, special issue ‘Touched by Geography’, Ed. D. Dixon.
Paterson, M. (2009)(Ed.) ‘Re-mediating touch’, edited Special Issue ‘Re-mediating Touch’ of The Senses and Society 4(2), 2009
