Vanier College 2026 Humanities Symposium - Thinking with our Senses

The 2026 Humanities Symposium at Vanier College will explore bodily experience as fundamental to knowledge making and to social connection, and it will tease out some of the contrasts with theoretical, disembodied aspects of our lives.

In a variety of presentations and experiential sessions, we will think together about how we see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and move through the world and thereby construct our relationships.

All sessions are in the Auditorium (A-103) unless otherwise indicated.

Monday, February 2

10:00 – 11:30am

Sophie Donelson (former editor-in-chief of House Beautiful)

Designing the Feeling Home

When we aim to improve our living space, we tend to focus on delighting the eye—a fresh paint colour, a new decorative accessory. But our homes nourish us with how they feel, not just how they look.

A living environment that's restful, rewarding, and memorable relies on far more than visual beauty—it must engage the senses, offering pleasant things to touch and pleasurable ways to move around.

So while the media will ask you to believe that creating a nice place is reliant on designer-approved tips and Amazon shopping lists, a feeling-home approach reframes how we think about design. It helps you make a living space that responds to your needs, delights your senses, and leaves you with a feeling of gratitude and possibility.

Donelson is the author of several books, including Uncommon Kitchens: A Revolutionary Approach to the Most Popular Room in the House (2023).

12:00 – 2:00pm

Irene Feher (Music, Concordia) (Auditorium Stage)

What Does it Mean to “Live your Music”?

We are wired to make music—yet many of us don’t always know where to begin when it comes to expressing the sound world that lives within us.

This participatory workshop invites up to 60 students into a playful creative exploration of melody, rhythm, and movement. No prior musical experience is necessary.

Dr. Feher is a highly active and inspiring music educator who works with all ages, facilitating free improvisation using gesture, body percussion, and vocalization in ways that are accessible, engaging, and joyful for everyone.

2:30 – 4:00pm

Maxime Doyon (Philosophy, University of Montreal)

Beyond the Five Senses: Rethinking the Map of Perception

We usually learn an Aristotelian picture of the “five senses,” but Professor Doyon will argue that these neat divisions start to fall apart once we ask what a sense actually is.

Classifying senses by how they feel, by organs, by brain areas, or by “what they detect” breaks down in familiar and surprising cases. The payoff is a more realistic picture: perception is often multisensory, and some key features of experience are built through interactions between modalities.

The session concludes by asking whether there are more than five senses, and why this matters for how we understand mind and body.

Doyon is the author of Phenomenology and the Norms of Perception (2025) and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.

Tuesday, February 3

10:00 – 11:30am

Dame Evelyn Glennie (via Zoom from the U.K.) KEYNOTE 1

The Importance of Listening

Hearing is the sense; listening is the action. Our sense of hearing is constantly stimulated by the world around us, but it is in giving our attention to the sounds around us, to the voicing of ideas, and to our own inner voice that we are able to evaluate and navigate our relationships and build communities.

Dame Evelyn Glennie will address the role of listening in understanding what is important to ourselves, having the vision and perseverance to pursue our goals, and developing the skills and resilience required to accomplish them.

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the world’s premier solo percussionist. Her solo recordings exceed 40 CDs. A double GRAMMY Award winner and BAFTA nominee, she composes for film, theatre, and television. The Evelyn Glennie Podcast was launched in 2020.

Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and has received over 100 international awards, including the Polar Music Prize, the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, and the Companion of Honour. She is Curator for The Evelyn Glennie Collection. Her iconic film Touch the Sound, TED Talk, and charity The Evelyn Glennie Foundation embody her lifelong mission to Teach the World to Listen.

11:30am – 1:30pm

John Lee Clark (Professional DeafBlind Poet / Concordia University PhD student)

Pro-tactile Communication and Poetry

John Lee Clark, a PhD student in Concordia University’s Humanities Interdisciplinary program, is the recipient of the 2024 Miriam Aaron Roland Graduate Fellowship and a finalist for the 2016 Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry and Activism.

Clark will discuss the range and possibilities of Pro-tactile—a new language emerging within the DeafBlind community. His unconventional poetic and academic path reflects a deep commitment to exploring how knowledge and experience can be shared through touch.

He is the author of Touch the Future: A Manifesto in Essays (2024) and How to Communicate: Poems (2022).

2:30 – 4:00pm

Erin Manning (Fine Arts and Philosophy, Concordia University; 3Ecologies) KEYNOTE 2

Thresholds of Experience

“A thousand other things sing to me,” writes DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark. Qualities of experience overlap. There is no distance. Everything has an effect. Everything makes a difference. A body is this quality of multisense overlap in incipient contact with an infinity of sense potentials.

These sense potentials are not located in a discrete sense, or in an object. They cannot be distilled to an ear or an eye, and cannot be located in a table or a marigold. They are always between, amodal, operating as thresholds of sensation that carry intensities themselves carried in the feeling.

This talk focuses on what sings on the thresholds of experience, countering assumptions associated with neurotypicality and what John Lee Clark calls distantism: the belief that a body is an enclosure; that the world is held at arm’s length; that certain bodies are more valued than others (white bodies, able bodies); that there exists a “normal” baseline of sensation; that the five senses are discrete; and that life without one or more of these senses is somehow diminished.

Erin Manning’s books include The Being of Relation (Intellect, 2025), Unsettled (Minor Compositions, 2025), Out of the Clear (Minor Compositions, 2022), and For a Pragmatics of the Useless (2020).

She works at the intersection of the three ecologies—the environmental, the conceptual, and the social—with an emphasis on alter-economies and the refusal of private property (3ecologies.org). Her artistic practice explores this transversality; a recent exhibition is 100 Acres (Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, 2024).

Wednesday, February 4

10:30am – 12:00pm

Dr. Minna Re Shin (Music Department, Vanier College)

Revisiting and Reimagining Classical Music Performance: Reflections on the Relationship among Composer, Performer, and Audience

Through the comparison of two classical music scenarios, pianist Minna Re Shin explores how the dynamic interplay among the composer, performer, and audience—along with the significant impact of “extramusical” elements of performance—creates a collaborative sensory experience shaped by artistic and cultural context.

These shared, embodied processes of interactivity make each performance unique. To illustrate, this session includes a live recital of Marjan Mozetich’s Three Pieces for Piano Solo (1984) and the screening of excerpts from performance videos Sonate Tableaux (2021) and Sonate des Saisons, offering insight into works in progress.

1:30pm – 3:30pm

Oana Suteu Khintirian, Filmmaker / PhD Candidate (Concordia University)

Revisiting the Idea of the Library as a Repository of Sense and Memory

Join Ms. Khintirian for a discussion of sense and memory, and how individuals and societies have recorded memory over time through oral histories, pen and paper, and digital media.

She will examine the evolving role of libraries as personal and public spaces of memory through excerpts from her 2022 film and reflect on the role of the filmmaker as a recorder of memory. This talk draws upon and extends her research for the NFB/ONF-produced film Beyond Paper / Au-delà du papier (2022).

The film may be freely viewed on the NFB website (individually or in classrooms) and is also available on Amazon Prime in Canada. Oana Suteu Khintirian’s work spans films, responsive environments, installation, and media scenography. Her films have screened internationally, and for over twenty years she collaborated with the National Film Board of Canada as a director, editor, mentor, and consultant.

Friday, February 6

10:00am – 12:30pm

Film Screening: Au-delà du papier / Beyond Paper (2022)

By Oana Suteu Khintirian (Runtime: 2h15)

“At a critical moment in the history of the written word, as humanity’s archives migrate to the cloud, one filmmaker goes on a journey around the globe to better understand how she can preserve her own Romanian and Armenian heritage, as well as our collective memory.”

Blending the intellectual with the poetic, the film follows a personal quest with universal resonance, navigating the continuum between paper and digital, and reminding us that human knowledge is, above all, an affair of the soul and the spirit (ONF/NFB).

The film explores efforts to preserve one of the world’s oldest existing libraries in Mauritania, the Internet Archive, the library of Jorge Luis Borges, and the university library in Bucharest, Romania.

2:00pm – 4:00pm

Mr. Louis “Tewenhni’tátshon” Delisle
Kahnawà:ke Survival School
Gyms A, B, and C

Lacrosse and Community (Interactive Workshop)

Join us for an exploration of the history of lacrosse in the Mohawk community and in Canada, and its importance for Indigenous peoples.

Louis “Tewenhni’tátshon” Delisle is the principal of Kahnawà:ke Survival School, where he teaches Kanien’kéha (Mohawk language) and incorporates lacrosse into school activities. He will be joined by four KSS lacrosse players who will demonstrate aspects of the game and guide participants through practice drills.

Vanier students will be invited to learn the basics of lacrosse, with the possibility of playing a mini game. All equipment and instruction will be provided.

A lifelong lacrosse player, Louis “Tewenhni’tátshon” Delisle was inducted into the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2014 and, more recently, into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 2025.