SI 'Semiotics of nature' published

HORTUS SEMIOTICUS (no. 6)
SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE SEMIOTICS OF NATURE
Guest editors: Riin Magnus, Nelly Mäekivi and Morten Tønnessen

Dear readers,

We are delighted to announce that the journal Hortus Semioticus has now published a special issue on the semiotics of nature. All together with 7 papers, a foreword, an interview, Meditationes Semioticae and 2 overview articles, this issue is almost exclusively in English. The papers of contributing MA and PhD students are all original papers written within a scientific framework which encapsuls the topics of meaning, value, communication, signification, representation, and cognition in and of nature.
1) Nelly Mäekivi, Riin Magnus and Morten Tønnessen: Editors foreword to the Special Issue Semiotics of Nature
2) Remo Gramigna: Augustine’s legacy for the history of zoosemiotics
3) John Haglund and Johan Blomberg: The meaning-sharing network
4) Silver Rattasepp: The idea of the extended organism in the 20th century history of ideas
5) Sara Cannizzaro: On form, function and meaning: working out the foundations of biosemiotics
6) Svitlana Biedarieva: Reflections in the Umwelten
7) Arlene Tucker: A metaphor is a metaphor
8) Patrick Masius: What are elephants doing in a Nazi concentration camp? The meaning of nature in the human catastrophe
9) Riin Magnus and Morten Tønnessen: The bio-translator. Interview with professor in biosemiotics Kalevi Kull (with his complete biosemiotic bibliography)
10) Meditationes Semioticae – this time by Kaie Kotov: Do you mind? Does it matter? Semiotics as a science of noosphere
11) Ülevaade: Acta Semiotica Estica VII

We hope that for our readers and contributors, these papers will encourage even more interest in the field, and open yet new horizons.

Bonnie Bassler TED video - How Bacteria Communicate

The contents of this video won't be news to anyone reading this blog; nonetheless, it's good to watch, and also interesting to see biosemiotic ideas spreading in places like TED.com.

Here's the url: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Updated CFP: Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations

The organizing team of the international conference 'Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations', to be arranged in Tartu April 4-8, 2011 - cf. previous post - has issued an updated CFP. The deadline for abstract submission is September 15th. To submit a proposal, interested scholars should e-mail an abstract (300-600 words) and a bio-note (less than 100 words) to the address zoosemiotics@semiootika.ee. The abstract and bio-note should be sent together in one file (.doc or .rtf) attached to the e-mail.

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The news fall in two categories - plenary speakers and publication venues. We are glad to announce the plenary speakers of the conference: Colin Allen (Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, USA), Jesper Hoffmeyer (Professor emeritus, Biological Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Graham Huggan (Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at University of Leeds, UK) and David Rothenberg (Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA).
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There are two publications planned for the articles based on conference presentations: a volume in Rodopi´s Nature, Culture and Literature series and a special issue on zoosemiotics in journal Semiotica.

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For up-to-date information, see the conference webpage.