Call for papers for 20th gathering in biosemiotics

The call for papers for the 20th gathering in biosemiotics, to be held at Palacký university in Olomouc, Czech Republic July 8-12th 2020, has been released, see conference webpage. Abstract deadline is February 28th.

Call for papers for NASS XI, "Anticipation and change"

«Anticipation and Change»

The 11th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies

Third Call for Papers

Stavanger, Norway, June 13–15th 2019

Venue: Department of social studies, University of Stavanger

The 11th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS XI) will be hosted by University of Stavanger (UiS) and is co-sponsored by Department of social studies (UiS)and «The Greenhouse: An environmental humanities initiative at University of Stavanger»

Theme

The overall theme of NASS XI is «Anticipation and change». Relevant topics include – but are not limited to – the semiotics of child development and human development in general, social change, cultural change, environmental change, ontogeny, and evolution. The anticipatory aspect implies that future studies and the power of imagination are also relevant topics, as are, potentially, learning and perception, expectation and prediction, foresight and preconception. We welcome abstract proposals that approach these topics from a semiotic perspective and encourage interdisciplinary relations between semiotics and other disciplines.

Keynote speakers: 

Ingvil Hellstrand(Network for gender research, University of Stavanger): «Brave new world? Dystopia and social change in contemporary science fiction»

Jon Kvist(Institute of Society and Globalization, Roskilde School of Governance, Roskilde University): «Recent welfare reforms: Development or dismantlement of the Nordic welfare model?»

Jaan Valsiner(Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University): «The little big sign-makers: What can be learned from children for general theory of sign mediation?»

Nora Bateson(filmmaker, writer and educator, President of the International Bateson Institute): «Unnamed senses, unscripted ethics, wide angle attention.»

Abstract submission

Abstracts should be submitted as a Word file attachment to nassXI@uis.no, with subject line ”Abstract for NASS XI”. In order to be considered for the graduate student award and grants (see below), please indicate whether or not you are a graduate student. If you are interested in organizing a thematic session involving several presentations, please contact the conference organizers (same email address as above).

Each abstract submission should contain: (1) The name of the author(s) (surname, given name); (2) Your affiliation (including country of residence); (3) Your email address; (4) The title of the paper; (5) An abstract of max. 500 words; (6) 3–5 keywords; (7) and a short bionote of max. 100 words.

Deadline for abstract submission is December 10th, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be given by January 31st, 2019.

Registration and conference fee

Registration for NASS XI will require payment of a conference fee (early bird 1000 NOK, late registration 1250 NOK) which entitles conference participants to attendance, coffee breaks and a daily lunch, and program booklet. The conference fee includes fee for NASS membership for the period 2019–2021 (250 NOK). 

Early bird registration deadline is March 15th, 2019. Final registration deadline is April 30th, 2019.

Graduate student award and grants

5-10 graduate students presenting a paper at NASS XI will be supported financially by NASS, with a grant of 200 Euro each.

Furthermore, a prize will be awarded for the best graduate student presentation at NASS XI. The prize consists of a gift card worth 300 Euro, and a diploma.

Publication of selected papers

A special issue of Sign Systems Studies, “Anticipation and change”, will be published with selected papers from NASS XI. More info about the journal here: http://www.sss.ut.ee/index.php/sss

Local organizing team

Morten Tønnessen (conference chair), Daria Segal (conference secretary)

Scientific committee (abstract evaluation)

Søren Brier (Copenhagen Business School), Luis Emilio Bruni (Aalborg University), Sara Lenninger (Kristianstad University), Juha Ojala (University of Oulu), Alin Olteanu (Kaunas University of Technology/University of Tartu), Tiit Remm (University of Tartu), Inesa Sahakyan (Université Grenoble Alpes), Aleksei Semenenko (Umeå University), Morten Tønnessen (University of Stavanger)

For more information, contact nassXI@uis.noor visit http://nordicsemiotics.org.

2nd CFP: Special issue "Semiotic aspects of the extended synthesis"

***Extended Deadline for Abstracts to May 1st 2017***

CALL FOR PAPERS
For a Special Issue of the journal Biosemiotics: Semiotic Aspects of the Extended Synthesis.

The journal Biosemiotics (Springer) is preparing a special issue on “Semiotic Aspects of the Extended Synthesis” guest-edited by Andrew M. Winters. While the field of biosemiotics is concerned with the origin and development of natural semiotic systems, much of the discussion has been framed in terms of Darwinian frameworks, including the Modern Synthesis. Non-Darwinian views were held by Uexküll and, more recently, Darwinian views have been supplemented in important ways by Kull, Hoffmeyer, and Barbieri. Many biological phenomena, such as transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, have yet to be explained in terms of these evolutionary theories. In the 1980s, biologists aimed to develop an Extended Synthesis to build upon and replace parts of the Modern Synthesis to better accommodate and explain these observed phenomenon. Given recent discussions of the Extended Synthesis, this Special Issue aims to understand the extent to which biosemiotics is commensurate with burgeoning developments in contemporary biology by exploring how core features of biosemiotics are either consistent or at odds with those accommodated by the Extended Synthesis.
 

The Special Issue of “Semiotic Aspects of the Extended Synthesis” welcomes papers that analyze specific semiotic processes within the Extended Synthesis, assess the general tenability of understanding biosemiotics in terms of the Extended Synthesis, or explore the relationship between biosemiotics and the Extended Synthesis. Papers in the form of theoretical works, empirical findings, or metatheoretical considerations are welcome.

Some potential questions to be explored in this Special Issue include:• How does the extended synthesis differ from Darwinian evolution and the modern synthesis in its impact on biosemiotics?• Does niche construction involve the construction of signs?• How does semiotics contribute to evolutionary-developmental biology?• Do signs further enhance plasticity and accommodation?• Are signs replicable?• Do signs and semiotic systems evolve?• Are signs capable of emerging and contributing to multilevel selection?• To what extent are candidate signs (e.g., genes) involved in genomic evolution? 

Technical Details and Timeline:• Paper Proposals (Title and Abstract) Due May 1st, 2017• Notification of Acceptance May 31st, 2017• Paper Submissions Due September 30th, 2017• Final Drafts Due January 31st, 2018• Electronic Publication February 2018• Print Version Issue #2 August 2018• Papers should be no more than 7,000 words (minus abstract and references)
• Instructions for authors can be found at:http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/evolutionary+%26+developmental+biolog
y/journal/12304• Submit abstracts and contact the editor at andrew.winters@sru.edu

CFP for special issue on the Extended Synthesis

CALL FOR PAPERS

For a Special Issue of the journal Biosemiotics: Semiotic Aspects of the Extended Synthesis

The journal Biosemiotics (Springer) is preparing a special issue on “Semiotic Aspects of the Extended Synthesis” guest-edited by Andrew M. Winters. While the field of biosemiotics is concerned with the origin and development of natural semiotic systems, much of the discussion has been framed in terms of Darwinian frameworks, including the Modern Synthesis. Non-Darwinian views were held by Uexküll and, more recently, Darwinian views have been supplemented in important ways by Kull, Hoffmeyer, and Barbieri. Many biological phenomena, such as transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, have yet to be explained in terms of these evolutionary theories. In the 1980s, biologists aimed to develop an Extended Synthesis to build upon and replace parts of the Modern Synthesis to better accommodate and explain these observed phenomenon. Given recent discussions of the Extended Synthesis, this Special Issue aims to understand the extent to which biosemiotics is commensurate with burgeoning developments in contemporary biology by exploring how core features of biosemiotics are either consistent or at odds with those accommodated by the Extended Synthesis.  

The Special Issue of “Semiotic Aspects of the Extended Synthesis” welcomes papers that analyze specific semiotic processes within the Extended Synthesis, assess the general tenability of understanding biosemiotics in terms of the Extended Synthesis, or explore the relationship between biosemiotics and the Extended Synthesis. Papers in the form of theoretical works, empirical findings, or metatheoretical considerations are welcome.  

Some potential questions to be explored in this Special Issue include: 

• How does the extended synthesis differ from Darwinian evolution and the modern synthesis in its impact on biosemiotics? 

• Does niche construction involve the construction of signs? 

• How does semiotics contribute to evolutionary-developmental biology? 

• Do signs further enhance plasticity and accommodation? 

• Are signs replicable? 

• Do signs and semiotic systems evolve? 

• Are signs capable of emerging and contributing to multilevel selection? 

• To what extent are candidate signs (e.g., genes) involved in genomic evolution? 

Technical Details and Timeline:

• Paper Proposals (Title and Abstract) Due January 31st, 2017

• Notification of Acceptance February 28th, 2017 

• Paper Submissions Due September 30th, 2017

• Final Drafts Due January 31st, 2018

• Electronic Publication February 2018

• Print Version Issue #2 August 2018

• Papers should be no more than 7,000 words (minus abstract and references)

• Instructions for authors can be found here

• Submit abstracts and contact the editor at andrew.winters@sru.edu

CFP: Session "Biosemiotics in dialogue" at 13th World Congress of Semiotics

CFP for the session “Biosemiotics in dialogue”

IASS/AIS 13th World Congress of Semiotics “Cross-Inter-Multi-Trans” (Kaunas, Lithuania, 26-30 June 2017)

Conceptually, biosemiotics is the semiotic study of living systems. In essence, biosemiotics is already more-than-semiotic as well as more-than-biological – it is interdisciplinary in nature, and builds on synthesis between ideas and theories from various fields. In this session, we will look at the history as well as future of biosemiotics in its relating to various fields.

More specifically, we look for answers to the following questions: What are the historical, methodological and conceptual ties between biosemiotics and neighboring disciplines? How can fruitful theoretical synthesis in form of biosemiotics best be achieved? How can biosemiotics draw on ideas and perspectives from neighboring fields of endeavor? What can other fields in semiotics and beyond learn from biosemiotics? How can biosemiotics in the best way take part in solving essential scientific problems of our time?

For participating, please register to the World Congress with indication of participation in the session “Biosemiotics in dialogue” and send your abstract also to timo.maran [@] ut.ee. Please note that the registration deadline is November 30, 2016.

With kind regards,

Kalevi Kull,

Morten Tønnessen,

Timo Maran

CFP: Special Issue of Biosemiotics: Constructive biosemiotics

Call for Papers

Special Issue of Biosemiotics (Springer): Constructive biosemiotics.

The journal Biosemiotics (Springer) is preparing a special issue on “Constructive biosemiotics” guest-edited by Tommi Vehkavaara and Alexei Sharov. By the epithet “constructive“ we are referring to a naturalized approach to agency, normativity, and knowledge that emphasizes the primacy of activity and real construction of the cognitive agents themselves as opposed to the view to agents as mainly passively or mechanically reacting. The aim of the Special Issue is to integrate such constructive approach with biosemiotics so that organisms and perhaps other types of living systems are considered as agents that construct their “knowledge”, i.e. their habits of interpreting signs, their own functional structure, and their environment (that typically includes other agents) they are interacting with. Such constructive perspective is present to some extent in the works of theoretical classics of biosemiotics, especially of Jakob von Uexküll (concepts of functional circle and Umwelt), Gregory Bateson (cybernetics and information), and C.S. Peirce (meaning of sign as constructed by its interpreter). In this special issue we welcome also other constructive starting points – not so often employed in biosemiotics – like Jean Piaget’s constructivism, Richard Lewontin’s emphasis on construction over adaptationism, autopoietic approaches, cybernetics, General systems theory (Ludwig von Bertalanffy), evolutionary epistemology, and interactivism (Mark Bickhard) as far as they are somehow applied to biosemiotic problematics.

Independently on the chosen semiotic terminology (e.g., sign, representation, meaning, or information), constructive biosemiotics understands the referents of these terms as being constructed by biosemiotic agents. Either these referents are materially constructed (composed) by the agent, or some already existing and available material items are identified and taken into service by the agent so that only their semiotic roles are constructed. In both cases, material items are merely vehicles of their semiotic functioning that are picked up for use according to the actual needs of the agent. That would mean to take the organism or agent point of view in its interaction with the world. The activity of agents is controlled by their subsystems that are goal-directed or embodying some normative functional criteria, which in some cases enables the agent to judge and detect the success of its semiotic operations. Although the developmental or short-term time scale is more natural in constructive view, we suggest that constructive biosemiotics should expand to the evolutionary dynamics, evolvability and (re)construction of receptor and effector subsystems of agents, and the whole evo-devo problematic. E.g. what is the role of agential constructions in longer term time scales (e.g. Baldwin effect) and whether or in which sense there can be said to be evolutionary agents (lineages, populations, etc.) capable of learning (evolutionary epistemology, vertical biosemiosis).

The special issue of Constructive biosemiotics welcomes papers that emphasize the constructive perspective in biosemiotic processes at functional and evolutionary time scales. The central question is how biosemiotic agents or systems are constructed and are constructing their semiotic behaviors like 

1. cognitive interactions (meaning formation and communication),

2. navigation in the environment (functional or intentional movements),

3. functional reconstruction of the environment (e.g. niche construction, moulding the other agents),

4. self-maintenance, self-modification, and (recursive) self-production of (semiotically) functional structures or scaffoldings (e.g., constructive development of full-scale competence), and

5. self-identification and -determination (e.g. the normative functioning of immune systems).

A further question concerns the criteria of agency. While organisms are usually understood as the prototype of biosemiotic agents, it can also be considered whether (or in which sense) it would be reasonable to consider also some other kind of biological unities – individual cells, organs, or populations, species, lineages, etc. – as agents capable of these behaviors. The special issue welcomes theoretical works, empirical findings, and metatheoretical considerations that employ constructive perspective biosemiotically relevant way.

Timetable and technical requirements:

- Deadline for submitting tentative titles and abstracts: January 2016

- Deadline for paper submission: September 2016

- Electronic publication ahead of print: January-February 2017

- Paper version, Issue #2, August 2017.

- Recommended length 7,000 words. Figures and tables are welcome (if possible).

- Instructions for Authors

- Contact with editors by e-mail: tommi.vehkavaara@uta.fi or sharoval@mail.nih.gov

Call for contributions: "Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion"

Shared on request:

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Rhetorical Animals: Boundaries of the Human in the Study of Persuasion

Editors:
Alex C. Parrish (James Madison University)
&
Kristian Bjørkdahl (Rokkan Centre for Social Studies)

In recent years, humanists and social scientists have shown increasing interest in human-animal relations – to the point where many now speak of an ‘animal turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Across history, psychology, anthropology, literature, sociology, philosophy, and law, an interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies has been forming. Certain common themes run through this diverse field, not least the reproduction of human-animal difference, and the conditions and the implications thereof.

Despite the long history of language use as a marker of such difference, the academic quest to investigate the boundary between human and nonhuman has, somewhat surprisingly, not taken root within rhetorical studies – at least not until now. For this edited volume, we therefore call for chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our ‘brute roots.’ In other words, this book invites contributions which enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. Would such a turn imply, for instance, that rhetoric needs a nonanthropocentric reconfiguration? The question, perhaps, is this: What difference would it make to the discipline if we assumed that nonhuman forms of communication were as interesting as human ones?

For this volume, we invite contributions from a variety of academic perspectives that help elucidate how rhetoric can benefit from and contribute to human-animal studies. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted, with a brief biography, to Alex Parrish at alexcparrish@gmail.com and to Kristian Bjørkdahl at kristian.bjorkdahl@uni.no. The closing date for submissions is 10 June 2015. Successful applicants will be notified by 20 June 2015. Full chapters are due 20 January 2016.

Bio-/zoosemiotic proposals for ASLE-UK conference welcome

There is a call for papers for the 2011 postgraduate conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment UK (London Sept 9-10), entitled "Emergent critical environments: Where next for ecology and the humanities?". "Biosemiotics and zoosemiotics" is mentioned in the list of "possible paper topics". Deadline is March 31st - also for panel or roundtable proposals.

I quote:

Individual papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please send a 250 word abstract and a brief biography (maximum 150 words) to Sam Solnick, Deborah Lilley and Kate Parry – emergentenvironments [at] gmail.com by 31 March 2011. Proposals for panels (3 speakers) and roundtables are also welcome: please send a 200 word summary of the rationale for the panel or roundtable, in addition to individual abstracts. Please send further enquiries to the above email address.

Call for papers: Zoosemiotics and animal representations

CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference: Zoosemiotics and animal representations
Place: Tartu (Estonia)
Time: April 4-8, 2011
Deadline for abstracts: September 15, 2010

Conference webpage here

KEY TOPICS OF THE CONFERENCE:
- Theory and methodology of zoosemiotics
- History of zoosemiotics, the legacy of Thomas A. Sebeok
- Practical applications of zoosemiotics (e.g. zoosemiotics and conservation)
- Zoosemiotics’ relation to relevant fields such as cognitive ethology, biosemiotics, ecocriticism etc.
- Animal experience (semiotics and phenomenology)
- Semiotic perspectives on animals in literature, art, films etc. (e.g. seeing man in animals, and the animal in men).
- Semiotics of human–animal relationships: historical, social and communicative perspectives (e.g. the semiotics of zoos, of wildlife management, and of domesticated animals).

-------------

Morten Tønnessen
Part of the organizing team

Call for papers: Special issue of Hortus Semioticus

See our call for papers below (plus here). Note that graduate students and young scholars are particularly encouraged to submit. As my fellow guest editor Riin Magnus writes in an email, we hope seniors in the field can help by spreading the cfp to potentially interested students and young professionals. We would like to express...

...that we would thereby also like to form and strengthen the network of graduate students working in the semiotics of nature or similar fields.

(MT)

CALL FOR PAPERS: SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE SEMIOTICS OF NATURE
Hortus Semioticus
Guest editors: Riin Magnus, Nelly Mäekivi and Morten Tønnessen

Hortus Semioticus is an online academic journal of semiotics - the study of signs and sign processes. In Tartu, Estonia, where the student journal is based, nature has long accompanied culture as a topic for semiotic inquiry (cf. the fields known as biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, and zoosemiotics). The driving force behind the journal is curiosity and the joy of inquiry. Around the summer of 2010 the journal will publish a special issue on the semiotics of nature (meaning living nature, rather than physical nature). We are inviting papers on the topics of meaning, value, communication, signification, representation, and cognition in and of nature (ranging from the cellular level to the global scene). We encourage originality within a scientific framework which emphazises the semiotic aspects of the life processes alluded to above. Not least, we strongly welcome submissions from other fields (besides, beyond or beneath semiotics). Graduate students and young scholars are particularly encouraged to submit. Contributions (5-20 pages) should be written in English or Estonian and sent to the guest editors by May 1st, 2010. Prior to that we're expecting an abstract (100-200 words) plus 3-5 keywords by April 1 2010. Please find further instructions here. Email addresses of the guest editors: riin.magnus@gmail.com (Riin Magnus), nellymaekivi@gmail.com (Nelly Mäekivi) and mortentoennessen@gmail.com (Morten Tønnessen)