Conferences and seminars in association with Department of Semiotics

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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

Homepage: https://conflict.haridusekraanil.ee/?fbclid=IwAR2y_pUSEyv4m5r_ncQ3tp84WxCZ4up-sGkwP5bOwElxjtj55c0DBtcNrR8

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 Loodusmaja (Lille, 10 Tartu)

Seminar homepage: https://www.flfi.ut.ee/et/semiootika-osakond/seminar-multispecies-city-diversity-communication-conflicts

Urban environments are inhabited not only by humans but by a number of species, including our pets, plants introduced by humans, commensals taking advantage of human resources, and also native species of the given area. Different species are related by manifold of relations: food chains, behavioural co-adaptations, interspecies communication, use of shared environments, and also cultural representations in case of human culture. A lot of this diversity is, however, concealed and the existence of other species in urban environments becomes often noticed only in the case of problematic and conflictive encounters. The unfolding interactions between species also depend heavily on spatial arrangements: urban planning, allocation of resources, migratory routes of birds and mammals and so on.

The diversity of species and their relations in urban environments makes multispecies city also a problematic object to study: it requires interdisciplinary co-operation and broad methodological approach. The aim of the current seminar is to bring together different disciplines working with the non-human species in cities to shed light upon differences as well as overlaps between approaches. This would include both theoretically-oriented approaches of semiotics and environmental history and more practically oriented approaches of urban planning and environmental education; natural science studies of plant and animal species in urban environments as well as humanities’ approaches to human discourses on and representations of other species. It is hoped that the seminar will open up new avenues and possibilities for future interdisciplinary cooperation.

Keynote lecture will be given by Ingvar Svanberg, Uppsala University, Sweden.

Abstract of the event.

Information

1. December

9.50 Timo Maran. Welcome address

10.00 Kalevi Kull. Semiotic mechanisms of biodiversity alienation in the city

10.30 Elle Roosaluste. Should the city be beautiful and what is the role of greenery in creating this beauty

11.00 Nelly Mäekivi. Preliminary notes on human and other animal species mutual interaction in cities

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Ingvar Svanberg. Plenary lecture. Various uses of urban ponds in Sweden from medieval times until the present day

13.30 Lunch

14.30 Field trip to a Tartu community garden (guided by Aili Elts).

16.00 Ene-Reet Soovik. Jaan Kaplinski's urbanature

16.30 Timo Maran. How literature helps to make sense how humans make sense of other species (in cities)

17.00 Coffee

17.30 Aili Elts. The hidden city - our green future

18.00 Karin Bachmann. Human-scale diversity

2. December

10.00 Marko Mägi. Acoustical scaring of corvids in the city

10.30 Sugata Bhattacharya. The perils of urban navigation for volant animals

11.00 Filip Jaroš. Cats and people in urban environments: Pets, strays and shelters

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Tiit Remm, Riin Magnus. Urban semiotics and urban nature: on the example of foreign trees

12.30 Veljo Runnel. Citizens discovering biodiversity in Tartu

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Gloria Niin, Liina Jürisoo. Fight for implementing environmentally friendly urban green space management and design in the University of Life Sciences

14.30 Toomas Paaver. Controversial urban planning in Estonia

15.30 Coffee

16.00 Roundtable. Towards multispecies city: challenges, prospects, hesitations

The seminar is supported by Estonian Research Council (PUT1363. Semiotics of multispecies environments: agencies, meaning making and communication conflicts) and by the (European Union) European Regional Development Fund (University of Tartu ASTRA Project PER ASPERA and Mobilitas+ project MOBJD124. Social behavior of animals in a cognitive and environmental context: a biosemiotic perspective).

Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2017 - Generalising Gently. August 15-18, 2017

The program can be downloaded from here.

Book of abstracts.

Homepage: http://tsss.ut.ee/

UT Summer University: "Juri Lotman and the Semiotics of Culture" July 3-14.2017

Homepage: http://www.ut.ee/en/admissions/juri-lotman-and-semiotics-culture

The Ecosemiotics Summer Seminar July 9.-11.2016, Muhu, Tamse

The ecosemiotics summer seminar ‘Ecological impoverishment as a collapse of sense’ takes place from the 9th to the 11th of July on the island of Muhu, in Tamse village. The language of the seminar will be English. Philosopher, biosemiotician and biologist Andreas Weber will be the keynote speaker of the seminar. The seminar will focus on environmental problems, which depart from and result in a shift in human cognition; the role of various forms of human sense (arts, science, religion) in the preservation of natural diversity; the transformation of the existential condition of humans in connection with environmental change; the loss of perceptual worlds as a consequence of biodiversity loss.

Conference information

9.07. Saturday

19.00 discussion round on ecological impoverishment and the collapse of sense

20.30 dinner

10.07. Sunday

9.00 Breakfast

9.30 Kalevi Kull Life is now

10.00 Riste Keskpaik

10.30 Tyler Bennett The Semiotic Continuity of Natural and Artistic Beauty

11.00 break

11.15. Andreas Weber Ecology of Feeling: Reality as Inwardness and Desire

13.00 lunch

14.30 Katre Pärn Lateralisation of brain functions as a source of cultural diversity

15.00 Ott Heinapuu The impoverisment in the diversity of Estonian sacred natural sites

15.30 break

16.00 Nelly Mäekivi Animals in the urban environment

16.30 Timo Maran Forest as a semiotic model: notes

17.00 A walk in and around Tamse

19.00 Dinner

11.07

9.00 Breakfast

9.30 Kadri Tüür Lost in representation

10.00 Riin Magnus Losing the sense of suffering

10.30 Mark Mets Thoughts on the necessity of plurality of meanings in the context of ecosemiotics

The seminar is co-organized by the Graduate School of Linguistics, Philosophy and Semiotics, supported by the (European Union) European Regional Development Fund (ASTRA project of the University of Tartu, PER ASPERA).

UT Summer University: "Juri Lotman and Semiotics of Culture" 4-15.7.2016

Homepage: http://www.ut.ee/en/admissions/juri-lotman-and-semiotics-culture

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

Information: https://www.tlu.ee/et/Humanitaarteaduste-instituut/Teadus/semiootikavaramu/uudised-syndmused

Tartu Semiotics Summer School 2015 and Nordic Association of Semiotic Studies IX conference "Semiotic (un-)predictability" August 17-20, 2015, in Tartu.

More information

The paradoxical co-presence of predictability and unpredictability is a fundamental aspect of the dynamics of the semiotic world. Abduction, habit, explosion, (artistic) modelling, code, interaction, meaning-making, signification, innovation, uncertainty, change, order and disorder, entropy, translation, interpretation – there are numerous concepts that reflect this tension in different kinds of semiotic systems and processes.

Predictability and unpredictability are processual notions that have been used for the description and analysis of different forms of creativity and freedom on both the psychological and the social level. They were also key concepts for Juri Lotman. He considered every act of communication and understanding as involving elements of unpredictability, and every dialogue as being not only about language use, but involving language creation as well. From the perspective of cultural dynamics, every revolution, but also every new fact or event within culture and society is an explosion – a tension between predictability and unpredictability. Underlying these conceptions is an understanding of predictability and unpredictability as it pertains to the different models we use for conceiving and changing reality: scientific as well as artistic. In order to sustain itself, every society needs both.

The conference will explore the functioning of semiotic mechanisms that mediate order and change in cultural, social, and biological systems from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. (Un-)predictability is also of utmost practical value incognition – for simpler forms of life, for human everyday life, for scientific inquiry, and in practically oriented applications of semiotics.

We invite presentation and session proposals that investigate the processes and structures that facilitate predictability and unpredictability in meaning-making, their particular forms, mechanisms and functions, as well as the role, value and nature of (scientific) predictability in the object domain and disciplinary tasks of semiotics. Proposals that approach the issues of predictability and unpredictability from theoretical as well as applied perspectives are welcome.

Plenary speakers will be Mihai Nadin, Stuart Kauffman, Jordan Zlatev, Ilya Utekhin.

See also homepage: http://tsss.ut.ee/about

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

Schedule of the conference.

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).

(download the pdf of the programme)

(read the abstract book of the conference)

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

Conference "Framing Nature: Signs, Stories, and Ecologies of Meaning", 29.04-3.05.2014

Conference information

“No meaning without a frame” – thus one might boil down the insights yielded by a century of research in the humanities. To interpret something as meaningful is to put it into a context, into a frame of reference within which it can begin to make sense. This holds not only for human signification, but also for the processes of signification that occur in the natural world, as they have been studied by biosemiotics. In a double take on its title, this conference inquires into the multiple, complex ways in which humans frame nature and are in turn framed by it. It seeks to explore the figure of the frame as an ecological concept which draws attention to the way in which meanings are embedded in and sustained by environments that are at once material and semiotic. At the same time, it invites a closer examination of the strategies of framing and contextualization that are constitutive of ecocritical research, as well as a comparison of ecocritical methodologies with those of neighbouring disciplines in the environmental humanities.

KEY TOPICS OF THE CONFERENCE

- agency, signs and stories in living and non-living nature
- local natural histories, local knowledge and nature representations
- mapping, modelling and/or storytelling as ways of framing of nature
- ecotranslatology: translating nature and nature writing
- scale effects: temporal and spatial frames in nature and nature representations
- cultural ecology and ecosemiotics: how do cultural and natural sign systems interact?
- comparative methodology: how do different disciplines within the environmental humanities frame their objects of study?
- the framing of environmental cognition and conduct in science and policy discourses
- the role of the mass media in shaping environmental consciousness

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Dr. Wendy Wheeler

Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Cultural Inquiry at London Metropolitan University.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c., Ernest W. B. Hess-Lüttich

Full Professor of German at the University of Bern, Honorary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch.

Prof. Dr. Steven Hartman

Professor at the Department of Humanities, Mid Sweden University, and Chair of the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

Prof. Dr Thomas McGovern

Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Zooarchaeology Laboratory, Hunter College, and Associate Director of the CUNY Human Ecodynamics Research Center, CUNY Graduate Center, City University of New York

PROGRAM OF THE CONFERENCE

CALL OF PAPERS

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS

IMPORTANT DATES

The deadline for sending abstracts: 10 October 2013
Registration: November 2013 – January 2014
Conference dates: 29 April–3 May 2014

CONFERENCE VENUE

Tartu University Library, Struve St. 1, Tartu, Estonia

SUPPORTERS

European Union European Regional Development Fund (CECT, EU/Estonia)
Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics at the University of Tartu
Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
Norway Financial Mechanism 2009-2014 (project contract no EMP151)
European Society for Environmental History

CONTACT

Email: framing_nature [ät] semiootika.ee

Postal address:
The conference "Framing Nature"
Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu
Jakobi 2
Tartu 51014
Estonia

For videos made from the lectures please visit the UTTV web page.

Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2013 - Autocommunication in Semiotic Systems 18-23.8.2013

More information

Summer School 2013 is five-day event taking place from August 18 to 23 at the Kääriku Leisure and Sports Center in Southern Estonia. This year's Summer School is dedicated to the 40th anniversary from the publication of the Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures, which first appeared in 1973.There lies a quintessential coincidence between cultural semiotics, Tartu-Moscow school, and the Theses which places this triplet amongst both the important and the amusing in the story of humanities. Taking the example of Theses from the past, and reflecting over it together with its influences across times to today, the semiotic circles might take up reflective autocommunication in order to set future steps in organising both the paradigm of semiotics and communicate the institution of semiotics to neighbouring paradigms. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures, we call for reflections on the context and co-texts leading to and from that milestone in semiotic studies.

Take a look at the Summer School website at http://tsss.ut.ee/about

Conference "Gatherings in Biosemiotics 2012", 17-22 July,2012

For more information:

More information

Gatherings in Biosemiotics is the annual meeting of world scholars studying sign processes in living systems. Since 2006, it has also been an annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS). In 2012, the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and the Estonian Semiotics Association welcome researchers in any academic discipline with an interest in biosemiotics to join theTwelfth Gatherings in Biosemiotics in Tartu, Estonia, from 17 to 22 July.

The Gatherings in Biosemiotics will focus on

        semiotic concepts and models of living systems,
        semiotic research methods in biology,
        biosemiotic case studies,
        collaboration between biosemiotics and other fields of study.

For general information about biosemiotics, please visit the ISBS website at www.biosemiotics.org . The Twelfth Gatherings in Biosemiotics is organized by the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu, the Estonian Semiotic Association, and the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies.

PROGRAM

ABSTRACTS

PRECONFERENCE SEMINAR INFO

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Conferences and seminars in association with Department of Semiotics

Robert Innis intensive course "Semiotic Linkages: Frameworks and Exemplifications"

Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2019 (17-20 August): Semiotic dimensions of spaces & literacies

Spring school "Semiotics of Conflict", June 5-7, 2019

Research seminar: “Inter- and transmedial translation analysis: methods and concepts” , March 22, 2019

Semiosalong 2018 "Excavations in the Esoteric" 31.10., 14.11.2018

Semiotics of hybrid natures: Anthropogenic ecosystems, multimodalities, transformed umwelts, 8–10.11.2018

Juri Lotman and the Semiotics of Culture, 2-14 July, 2018

Semiosalong: Order In/From Chaos: Self-Organizing Systems, 19.03.,2.04.2018

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

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

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

Lecture series celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Sign Systems Studies"

Intensive course "Commercial applications of semiotics"

Conference "Framing Nature: Signs, Stories, and Ecologies of Meaning", 29.04-3.05.2014

Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2013 - Autocommunication in Semiotic Systems 18-23.8.2013

Conference "Gatherings in Biosemiotics 2012", 17-22 July,2012

Tartu Semiotics Summer School 2011 - Semiotic Modelling 22-26.8.2011