Sushma Subramanian

Science Writer & Journalist
Associate Professor of Journalism, University of Mary Washington

Sushma Subramanian is the author of “How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch,” a book that explores the scientific, physical, emotional, and cultural aspects of touch and that aims to reconnect readers to what is arguably our most important sense. Her other journalistic writings, which focus on scientific research inquiries that affect our day to day experiences of life, have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American, Discover, Elle and many others. She also teaches journalism as an associate professor at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. She has received fellowship support from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke, the Genetics and Behavior Journalism Fellowship at UVA, the Center for Health Journalism at USC, the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, the International Women’s Media Foundation and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Participant In:

Touch as the Ur-Sense: From Presence to Poesy

March 9th, 2024 at 2:30PM

Past Event

“Now the touch only is common to all animals.”  Agrippa The very notion of sentience, with its root in feeling, cannot be understood without some reference to sensation. And sensation itself has at its bare core a “something” we feel. The response to that feeling is the mark of life: “quickening” upon touch is how we distinguish the… read more »