Language mediates our relationships to our past and the rapidly changing world around us. However, our understandings of linguistic mediation have been limited by widespread spoken-language bias. Social scientists have demonstrated that language is not limited to one modality and that it couples prolifically with gesture and other modes of expression. Since 2007, a new, tactile language has been emerging in DeafBlind communities in the U.S. called “Protactile Language.” This language is produced on the body of the listener, or what protactile theorists aj granda and Jelica Nuccio call “contact space.” In contact space, there are stories that open onto large, expansive fields, extending across your chest and down your arm. There are corn stalks that grow up your arm and through your fingers. There is the warmth of the sun at sunset, slowly receding over your shoulder and slipping away behind your back. There are histories that start at your right shoulder and proceed in detailed stops toward your left. There are even wind storms, coming straight from the storyteller’s mouth and billowing down your shirt. This project brings together a team of linguists, anthropologists, media scholars, and DeafBlind people with special expertise in protactile storytelling traditions to find new multimodal ways of generating and circulating cultural and historical knowledge. While multimodality is commonplace in visual channels (think of a history book with pictures in it), this project will explore the ways that tactile, olfactory, and thermal channels can shape our impressions of the past and open up new possibilities for the future.