This course explores the philosophy of sensations. We consider specifically how perceptions (touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell) are ordered and distributed by "art” and other culture making practices. Our study of the history of aesthetics highlights signal shifts in the relationship between experience and technological and political conditions. For example, we explore how algorithms can consolidate some conceptions of beauty while marginalizing or even eliminating others, and the ways in which social ruptures, such as liberation struggles, inspire us to connect with and experience our bodies in new ways. To help us tackle these expansive and complex concerns, we move through a series of ten topics that highlight specific aesthetic operations (such imitation or mimicry) and critical aesthetic movements (among them, idealism, the extraction of timeless truths from constantly changing flows of experience). As we examine these topics, we accumulate a lexicon of concepts and terms, including “the sublime”, “essence”, “authenticity”, and “corporeality”. Each of us will research a term or concept and consider what it reveals about specific cultural or art objects and everyday life. These definitions and examples, shared in class, are assembled into an anthology at the end of the semester.