March 28, 2024

Subramanian to Release Book on ‘The Science and Meaning of Touch’

Assistant Professor of Communication Sushma Subramanian

Assistant Professor of Communication Sushma Subramanian

Assistant Professor of Journalism Sushma Subramanian’s book “How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch” will be released by Columbia University Press in February 2021.

We are out of touch. Many people fear that we are trapped inside our screens, becoming less in tune with our bodies and losing our connection to the physical world. But the sense of touch has been undervalued since long before the days of digital isolation. Because of deeply rooted beliefs that favor the cerebral over the corporeal, touch is maligned as dirty or sentimental, in contrast with supposedly more elevated modes of perceiving the world.

How to Feel explores the scientific, physical, emotional, and cultural aspects of touch, reconnecting us to what is arguably our most important sense. Sushma Subramanian introduces readers to the scientists whose groundbreaking research is underscoring the role of touch in our lives. Through vivid individual stories—a man who lost his sense of touch in his late teens, a woman who experiences touch-emotion synesthesia, her own efforts to become less touch averse—Subramanian explains the science of the somatosensory system and our philosophical beliefs about it. She visits labs that are shaping the textures of objects we use every day, from cereal to synthetic fabrics. The book highlights the growing field of haptics, which is trying to incorporate tactile interactions into devices such as phones that touch us back and prosthetic limbs that can feel. How to Feeloffers a new appreciation for a vital but misunderstood sense and how we can use it to live more fully. Learn more.

Subramanian Published in Elle Magazine

Assistant Professor of Communication Sushma Subramanian

Assistant Professor of Communication Sushma Subramanian

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor of journalism in Communication and Digital Studies, wrote an essay for the October issue of Elle Magazine about what she learned about herself by joining massage school and how it relates to living through a pandemic. The story also promotes her forthcoming book “How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch,” which recently received a positive review from Publishers Weekly.

Subramanian Published in The Atlantic

Assistant Professor of Journalism Sushma Subramanian

Assistant Professor of Journalism Sushma Subramanian

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor of journalism in the Communication and Digital Studies Department has written a piece for The Atlantic about endangered pink river dolphins in Brazil. The story explores what the myths surrounding these dolphins can teach us about ourselves and is based on her travels in the Amazon. Read more.

Subramanian Publishes Story on Depression in The Atlantic

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication

Sushma Subramanian, journalist and assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, has published a story in The Atlantic about an emerging form of depression in Japan, colloquially called “modern-type depression.” In her piece, she explores the work of Japanese scientists studying the social changes that have contributed to this condition: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/10/modern-type-depression-japan/600160/.

Born to Swim (Hakai magazine)

Sushma Subramanian Featured in Storytelling Podcast

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor of English specializing in journalism, recently appeared on a Story Collider podcast episode titled “Sense of Touch” telling a story about her experiments using haptic technology to communicate with her long-distance fiance. She performed the piece, which is adapted from a forthcoming book she is writing, at Busboys & Poets last spring. Story Collider is a nonprofit organization that promotes storytelling as a way of humanizing science.

You can listen to her story here: https://www.storycollider.org/stories/2018/8/24/sense-of-touch-stories-about-the-power-of-touch.

Subrmananian Chosen as Livingston Awards Finalist

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor of English with a focus on journalism, is a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists​. The award honors the best reporting and storytelling by journalists under 35 and is popularly known as the Pulitzer for the Young. The work for which she is being recognized is a cover story for Slate on a cruel medical experiment done in Guatemala in the 1940s and the subjects and their families who are still affected.

Read the piece here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/02/guatemala_syphilis_experiments_worse_than_tuskegee.html

The award winners will be chosen in June.

A complete list of finalists can be found here: https://wallacehouse.umich.edu/2018-livingston-award-finalists-announced/

Subramanian Awarded Journalism Fellowship

Sushma Subramanian, assistant professor of English specializing in journalism, was recently awarded a Genetics and Human Behavior Journalism Fellowship. For the GHA Fellowship, Subramanian will observe researchers studying the physiology of the Bajau laut, a group in Indonesia known for their unique ability to see underwater and hold their breath for long periods while diving, to understand whether humans may have special adaptations for swimming.

Subramanian’s is one of five fellowships awarded by the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia and aimed at early- and mid-career journalists. The fellowship supports ambitious, long-form stories on the broad theme of genetics and behavior. The fellowship was established by Eric Turkheimer, Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor, Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia, and Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the Finch and Maxwell M. Geffen Professor of Medical and Scientific Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.

Subramanian Publishes Story in Discover Magazine

Sushma Subramanian, journalist and assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, has published the story “My Forgotten Language” in the November issue of Discover Magazine. Her reported personal essay looks into the science behind how she lost the ability to speak her first language, Tamil, after moving to the United States as a child and being encouraged to only use English by teachers. She speaks to neuroscience researchers about how language is stored in the brain, why she retains the ability to understand but not speak in Tamil and what it might take to bring back the full range of her language abilities.

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Worse Than Tuskegee (Slate)