Scanning the web looking for anything related to graduate-level study of semiotics comes shows a bizarre trend. Many websites whose descriptions are promising, end up being a) written in borderline-unreadeable HTML and b) last updated sometime in 2000. What gives? What happened to semiotics in the year 2000?
As a rookie in the field, one idea I had could be related to the death of Sebeok, the theorist who seems to have carried the field in the US solely on his shoulders. Were the circumstances of his life in the year+ preceding his death such that the field in the States as a whole was ground to a halt?
When I spoke of “one idea” above, the impression was given that there were more ideas to follow this one idea. There are no such subsequent ideas.
What happened? Is it solely a coincidence that institutional semiotics seemed to go extinct around the turn of the century, or was it already on it’s way out? Where does one pursue the serious study of semiotics beyond an anthropology, or media studies, or philosophy department that offers one intro- class that doesn’t go significantly beyond de Saussure and Pierce? The only large-scale department I’ve found information for is the Tartu semiotics department, which doesn’t seem to fund international students very well.
Is semiotics in the US dead? Has it been dead?
Posted on April 28, 2010
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