“SENSATION!” is an exhibit about your body: your eyes, ears, nostrils, skin, and tongue. It’s also about that strange, seductive sixth sense, your imagination. How does the news touch your imagination to make your body feel? 

Today, “sensational” writing is an exaggerated, titillating representation of sex or crime. In the 1800s, though, “sensational” simply meant creating a strong impact on the senses. When we recover this historical definition, many newspapers begin to seem sensational.

Newspapers, after all, represent events in words and images. When these words and images become “sensational,” they impact your senses to create a feeling of immediacy. Events are happening now! They are real! They are urgent! This feeling of immediacy makes us forget that the news is an artistic object, crafted by literary and visual choices.

Sensationalism is designed to shake you, startle you, and fill you with feeling. These documents ask a fundamental question, the same question that the news asks today: what does it mean to be a body in relation with the world?

“SENSATION! Reported Bodies in 19th-Century American Media” builds on a Comparative Literature Department senior essay, and features documents from several of Yale Library’s special collections, including Cushing/Whitney Medical Historical Library, Robert F. Haas Family Arts Library, and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.