Conferences and seminars in association with Department of Semiotics
Videos of guest lectures and seminars are available for viewing here: https://www.flfi.ut.ee/en/videos
Transmedial turn? Potentials, problems, and points to consider

8–11 December 2020, University of Tartu, Estonia
We are happy to invite you to participate in the conference "Transmedial turn?" – the second conference in a series of academic gatherings dedicated to the studiey of intersemiotic processes in culture.
As the title of the conference indicates, the central topic of inquiry is the cultural shift from logocentric to increasingly intersemiotic, intermedial and transmedial processes and its impact on disciplines that study textual transfers, relations between semiotic systems or media, and new media practices. We foreground the notion ‘transmedia’ – with its prefix trans- meaning ‘across’, ‘beyond’, ‘through’ – to highlight the ubiquity of processes and phenomena of media crossovers.
The conference aims at bringing together scholars from disciplines interested in textual transfers across languages, genres and media, among them Translation Studies, Semiotics, and Adaptation Studies, and to promote a more complex understanding of the transmedial processes and phenomena in culture, particularly of the diverse and novel theoretical perspectives, concepts and methods used in various disciplines for approaching these processes and phenomena.
Read the Call for Papers or download it as PDF.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Irina Rajewsky, Free University of Berlin
Thomas Leitch, University of Delaware
Anthony Pym, University of Melbourne
HONORARY SPEAKERS
Peeter Torop, University of Tartu
Lars Elleström, Linnaeus University
KEY DATES
Extended deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 March 2020
Notification of acceptance of paper presentations: 15 April 2020
Registration opens: 1 May 2020
Registration form will be available on the conference website.
Andrew Stables: guest lecture on educational semiotics
Educational semiotician Andrew Stables (UK) will give a public lecture at the department of semiotics on February 21st, at 14.15 (Jakobi 2-306) titled "From Minimal Ontological Realism to New Localism: implications for politics and education". He will explain how he has developed his view of semiosis as a universal process, and what distinguishes it from other approaches. He will then discuss the implications of that view for theories of learning and education, and for thinking about politics, economics, and culture more broadly.
Andrew Stables is an eminent scholar in the field of semiotics and educational philosophy. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Roehampton. His latest monography is titled New Localism: Living in the Here and Now (Springer 2019).
Everyone is welcome to attend!
Robert Innis intensive course "Semiotic Linkages: Frameworks and Exemplifications"

You are all welcome to the intensive course "Semiotic Linkages: Frameworks and Exemplifications“ taught by the distinguished philosopher, semiotician and cultural psychologist Robert Innis.
The course of lectures and seminars will present the results of reflections on selected semiotic topics arising from an examination of intertwined analytical concepts developed, often without any explicit relation to one another, by C. S. Peirce, John Dewey, Karl Bühler, Michael Polanyi, Ernst Cassirer, and Susanne Langer. Starting from and developing in the sessions the problem of the contrasting relations of lower and upper levels of signification in the semiotic continuum, I will outline the main lines of my researches on (a) the intersections and differences between Peirce’s and Dewey’s pragmatist approaches to language and to ourselves as the ‘language animal’ with special attention to their bearing on the issues of ineffability and the thresholds of sense, (b) the analytical value and continuing semiotic relevance of Bühler’s organon model of language and its relation to Alan Gardiner’s ‘situation’ or ‘field’ theory, (c) the relation between Polanyi’s and Peirce’s approach to the creativity of ‘articulation’ and the perceptual or tacit roots of linguistic meaning, (d) some semiotic and perceptual aspects of our embodiment in technological systems, linking Polanyi, Dewey, and Cassirer, (e) the intertwining of perceptual, semiotic, and hermeneutic dimensions in the experience of art, (f) the relations between a Peircean semiotic aesthetics and the pragmatist, perception based aesthetics of Dewey, and (g) a sketch of some semiotic and existential pathways in self-reflection and thinking about oneself.
Robert Innis is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The past five years he has been Obel Foundation Visiting Professor at the Centre for Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University. He has also been Fulbright Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He has published many articles, monographs, and books on the intersections between philosophy and the human sciences, with special focus on philosophical semiotics, aesthetics, the philosophy of technology, and the philosophy of religion. His books include “Karl Bühler: Semiotic Foundations of Language Theory”, “Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology”, “Consciousness and the Play of Signs”, “Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense”, and “Susanne Langer in Focus: The Symbolic Mind”. His book “Between Philosophy and Cultural Psychology: Analytical Resources at the Thresholds of Sense” will be published by Springer in 2020.
Further information and registration here.
The event is supported by the University of Tartu ASTRA project PER ASPERA (Estonian Graduate School of Culture udies and Arts), and financed by the European Union, European regional Development Fund.
Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2019 (17-20 August): Semiotic dimensions of spaces & literacies
Official homepage: http://tsss.ut.ee/
Spring school "Semiotics of Conflict", June 5-7, 2019
Research seminar: “Inter- and transmedial translation analysis: methods and concepts” , March 22, 2019
The movement of texts from one medium to another and their parallel manifestation in various media are phenomena that are well-known to us from our everyday life as well as from history (e.g. the same text as a work of literature, as a film or as a comic strip; the same story told orally or in written form, as pictures or as songs etc.). The research seminar focuses on the possibilities of analysing intermedial and transmedial translation: which conceptual means and which methods are suitable for understanding and explaining inter- and transmedial translation. The working languages of the seminar are Estonian and English.
Program can be downloaded here.
Book of abstracts can be downloaded here.
Call for papers can be downloaded from here.
The seminar is part of the base financed project PHVFI17926 "Transmedial translation history: foundations of transmedial text analysis" supported by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Tartu.
Semiosalong 2018 "Excavations in the Esoteric" 31.10., 14.11.2018
- Oct. 31: Mehmet Emir Uslu: "When the Hunt Goes Wild: Cynegetic Relationships with Nature" and Sugata Bhattacharya: "Visual Hunting and Gathering"
- Nov. 14. Israel Chavez: "An Exoteric Image and Its Esoteric Semiotics" and Kyle York "Approaching Buddhism Through Analytic Philosophy"
- Nov. 29. Òscar Castro: "Hermeticism and the Search for a Semiotics of the Sacred" and Tiit Remm: "The Personal and the Universal in Spatial Models of the Sociocultural World"
Semiotics of hybrid natures: Anthropogenic ecosystems, multimodalities, transformed umwelts, 8–10.11.2018
Official homepage of the conference, including call for papers, book of abstracts and links to videos of all presentations is https://www.flfi.ut.ee/en/semiotics-of-hybrid-natures
Juri Lotman and the Semiotics of Culture, 2-14 July, 2018
Homepage: https://jlsc.ut.ee/
Semiosalong: Order In/From Chaos: Self-Organizing Systems, 19.03.,2.04.2018

- 19.03.2018 Andres Kurismaa, Israel Chavez
- 02.04.2018 Peeter Tinits, Oleg Sobcchuk
- 16.04.2018 Alexander Davies, Mihhail Lotman & Kalevi Kull
Seminar "Multispecies City: diversity, communication, conflicts" 1.-2.12.2017
Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2017 - Generalising Gently. August 15-18, 2017
UT Summer University: "Juri Lotman and the Semiotics of Culture" July 3-14.2017
The Ecosemiotics Summer Seminar July 9.-11.2016, Muhu, Tamse
UT Summer University: "Juri Lotman and Semiotics of Culture" 4-15.7.2016
Semiofest Tallinn 2016, 1-4.6.2016
Homepage: http://2016.semiofest.com/
The 8th Annual Lotman Conference at Tallinn University. Coorganized with the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, 27-29.05.2016
Tartu Semiotics Summer School 2015 and Nordic Association of Semiotic Studies IX conference "Semiotic (un-)predictability" August 17-20, 2015, in Tartu.
15th Ecosemiotics Summer Seminar: Semiotics of anticipation, July 6-8, 2015
Place: Lihula Parish, Paali-Tõnise turismitalu, Estonia
Panel discussion – “Current trends in the world of biosemiotics” (D. Favareau, K. Kull, T. Maran)
Kalevi Kull - "Semiosis and phenomenal present"
Riin Magnus - "The normal and the pathological in ecosystems: A Canguilhemian approach"
Marta Limmert - “Anticipation in human–animal communication: The example of feeding situation”
Timo Maran - "Towards a Typology on Environmental Signs"
Katre Pärn - “A few remarks on the concept of ecosystem in information systems modeling”
Luke Cui - "Anthropophagi"
Donald Favareau (National University of Singapore) - "Creation of the Relevant Next: How Living Systems Capture the Power of the Adjacent Possible through Sign Use"
Kaur Einasto - “Symbol grounding: Biosemiotic aspects”
Silver Rattasepp - "Ontology of others"
Tyler Bennett - "Signs of the natural imaginary"
Tiit Remm - "Spacialization and anticipation"
Paris/Tartu – Barthes/Lotman. Le reve du science nouvelle/Unistus uuest teadusest
Conference "Creative Continuity" is part of the anniversary events of Sign Systems Studies
Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu continues the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the world oldest international journal of semiotics - Sign Systems Studies - with the international, bilingual conference "Creative Continuity" taking place in December, 5-6, 2014 in Tartu, Ülikooli 18-232.
Within the framework of the conference the first Juri Lotman Lecture given by Edna Andrews (Duke University, USA) titled "The importance of Lotmanian semiotics to sign theory and the cognitive neurosciences".
Francesco Bellucci "Peirce and Modern Semiotics: Locke, Leibniz and the 'Threshold of Pragmatism"
Jesper Hoffmeyer "Cassirer's challenge: On semiosis and systems"
The anniversary events are supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Center of Excellence in Cultural Theory CECT).
Lecture series celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Sign Systems Studies"
The lecture series, called "Loenguid märgisüsteemide alalt" (in English: lectures from the field of sign systems) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the journal "Sign Systems Studies". Mostly lectures are in Estonian, but several foreign guests will come also.
The lecture series is supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Center of Excellence CECT).
Igor Pilshchikov will speak on the topic of "The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics in Transnational Perspective”. His lecture will take place on the 17th of September, 2014, at 4 pm in Jakobi 2-306.
The lecture will focus on
the evolution of structural and semiotic approaches to languages, literatures and cultures in Estonia, and the role of "Sign Systems Studies";
the continuity and transfer of ideas and organizational forms between Russian formalism, Polish formalism, Czech interwar structuralism and, finally, post-WWII Estonian, Russian, Italian, and French structuralism and semiotics;
the influence of TMS on literary theory and semiotics of culture in Europe and worldwide, and the prospects for its recalibration in the context of contemporary cultural and literary theory.
Watch the video of the lecture from here.
Carlo Ginzburg peab will speak on the topic "Dialogue as Fight, Dialogue as Challenge”. His lecture will take place on the 24th of September, at 4 pm at Ülikooli 18 - 232.
Abstract. For many years, I have been trying to develop in many different directions Mikhail Bakhtin's reflections on the dialogic dimension. I would like to illustrate this point, focusing on a few case studies, related to my own research as a historian.
Watch the video of the lecture from here.
Intensive course "Commercial applications of semiotics"
All the lectures can be viewed at http://www.uttv.ee/otsing#teema=205