Special panel at the 11th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Nanjing, China (5 – 9 October 2012)
convened by
Paul Cobley (London Metropolitan University)
and
Don Favareau (National University of Singapore)
At the 11th Gatherings in Biosemiotics in New York (2011), Don Favareau stated a simple, but seldom voiced, question regarding biosemiotics’ status. It concerned whether biosemiotics was to be viewed as a “semiotization of biology” or whether, on the other hand, it should be considered a “biologization of semiotics”. In the same year, Claus Emmeche asked “is biosemiotics really one single (though cross-disciplinary) field of research?” (2011: 370). In the previous year, Salthe (2010: 248) suggested that biosemiotics is “a possible interdisciplinary hub for many discourses, rather than being on the threshold of splitting into many ‘discipline-specific programs’”. Yet, these questions are clearly not just a matter of biosemiotics’ position in an ahistorical, disinterested academy; they are also a matter of globality, that is:
• biosemiotics as a comprehensive theory of semiosis, incorporating trans- and inter-disciplinarity;
• biosemiotics as a geographical field, bringing together (or not) scholars across national and global boundaries.
Papers are invited to address these problems. Topics will include, but not be limited to, the following:
• translatability (and non-translatability) of semiotic concepts;
• the modelling of living systems;
• semiotic research methods across disciplines;
• geographical locations of biosemiotic endeavour;
• socio-historical analysis of biosemiotic endeavour;
• case studies in biosemiotics;
• inter-disciplinarity, trans-disciplinarity and their obstacles.
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, as a Rich Text Format document attached to an email, to the panel organizers
favareau@biosemiotics.org
p.cobley@londonmet.ac.uk
by 27 February 2012.
Main Congress website: http://www.semio2012.com/