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?

http://www.ut.ee/SOSE/conference/2011_zoosemiotics/index.html

Zoosemiotics is an interdisciplinary research program introduced by an American semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok in the 1960s with the aim to merge semiotics and ethology and to launch semiotic studies of animal communication. The foundational idea in zoosemiotics is that relations between animals and their environment as well as between different individuals are not purely physical, but are to a large extent sign-mediated. This gives a significant role to the animal subjects, and recognizes more as well as higher forms of complexity in animals than previously assumed. A lot has happened since the concept of zoosemiotics was proposed: the rise of biosemiotics and cognitive ethology are two among the many important developments in the field of animal communication studies.

Now, almost 50 years after Sebeok’s initiative, the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu organizes an international gathering aiming to look back at the history of zoosemiotics, but also to look ahead towards the future of semiotic studies of animals. At this event, the scope of zoosemiotics is defined broadly, so as to include specific studies in the history of science, philosophical accounts of animals, case studies on animal communication as well as animal representations in literature and other media. At the same time, the focus of the conference is explicitly twofold: “semiotic processes” and “animals” are the key concepts that are to guide the conference as well as the individual presentations. Researchers from various backgrounds who have been inspired by zoosemiotics or who are interested in different aspects of semiotic studies of animals are invited to participate in 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).

To submit a proposal, interested scholars (and graduate students) should e-mail an abstract (300-600 words) and a bio-note (less than 100 words) to the address: zoosemiotics@semiootika.ee. Abstracts should be sent as separate single one-page files (.doc or .rtf). The deadline for the abstracts is 15. September 2010. Earlier submissions are highly encouraged. The conference “Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations” has an international advisory board. All presentation abstracts will be peer-reviewed

Keynotes: Carol Adams and David Clark

The emergent field of animal and animality studies is rapidly being articulated across scholarly boundaries. We invite graduate students to enter this growing conversation and approach the topic from perspectives reflecting the broad (inter)disciplinarity of this field. Discussions will use animal studies as a conceptual lens in order to investigate issues including the boundaries between self and Other, agency and biological drive, and reason and non-reason; the codes that permeate our conceptions of non-human animals; and the implications of troubling and/or making porous the human/animal divide. Is understanding human beings as embodied subjects ontologically bound to our relationship to non-human animals? In what ways is animal wellbeing crucially implicated in how we think ourselves into and against animals? As part of these discussions, we welcome investigations into the ways that (as Val Plumwood contends) animals, nature, and racial, colonial, and gendered Others function, now and historically, as overlapping sites of difference. We also invite considerations of the relationship between the conceptual economy that posits animality as an exploitable trope and forms of Othering that render animals as salable things. In approaching these topics, we encourage participants to consider how animal and animality studies has impacted other theoretical lenses, including critical race theory and feminist, postcolonial, and ecocritical/environmental studies, as well as the attendant politics of our disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the field.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

* Thinking with animals / intro-species boundary disruption
* Becoming animals and biocentric ethics
* The boundary between domestic and wild, sentiment and
terror
* Making animals ‘matter’ and the role of affect
* Animal poetry and ecopoetics
* Animals and the nation in the nineteenth century and beyond
* Animals and spectacle (both alive and dead)
* Urban and wild animals and the politics of space
* Animal geographies and environmental histories
* Animals and transnational ecologies
* Speciesm and racism
* Animals and desire / animality and sexuality
* Vegetarianism and the politics of meat
* Animals in language / symbolic animals
* The discourses and iconography of animals in various
cultural forms
* The uses of animals in war and torture
* Animal studies now and its future directions

Proposals may reflect traditional and innovative formats, including papers, panels, roundtables, and community dialogues, as well as creative submissions. Please send an abstract of approximately 250 words, along with your name, department, affiliation, and e-mail address tojaime.j.s.denike@queensu.ca. For creative submissions, send 30 lines of poetry or a 300 word excerpt. For information about our call for artistic submissions for our connected Just Act Natural art exhibit, please contactvisser.lisa@gmail.com .

The deadline for submissions is October 1st, 2009.

ANNOUNCE
THE FRENCH SECTION’S SECOND ANNUAL GRADUATE CONFERENCE

Littérature & animalité
April 15-16^th, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

Much has been written about animality: it is a theme that permeates all periods and cultures in various forms. The intersection between humanity and animality remains a vibrant area of inquiry. In recent years, numerous works have engaged with this question, including, from a philosophical point of view, Jacques Derrida’s L’Animal que donc je suis; from a historical perspective, Michel Pastoureau’s illuminating history of the bear; and from an epistemological standpoint, work by Lorraine Daston. Moreover, research teams have been formed and
conferences are being organized in various places on this problem, for example under the auspices of the Animalittérature project, sponsored by the Université de Paris 3 and the CNRS, which focuses on literature of the 20th and 21st centuries: http://www.ecritures-modernite.eu/?page_id=248.

We are especially interested in investigating the role of literature, throughout the ages, in the definition and uses of the animal. The abundance of literary references allows us to posit that animality is a subject proper to writers. Since classical antiquity, animals have comprised an integral part of literature. They are used in social caricatures, as metaphors or rhetorical devices. They allow dialogue between the self and the other and among literary genres, and they highlight notions of monstrosity, metamorphosis and hybridity.

The animal can also be seen as a specific optic through which we can understand how poetry and literary fiction have contributed to the development of the history of science. Greco-Roman literatures, influenced by Aristotle’s History of Animals, raise questions about animals and their souls and offer fertile grounds for reflection upon the elaboration of a theory of humanity.

This colloquium aims to address the question of animality in French-language literature from the twelfth century to the present day. It is clear that within this topic there exists a vast number of examples, for in the realm of literature, in many forms over many centuries, animality has
provided a rich source of discourses and representations. We will explore how the animal kingdom serves as a taxonomy for classifying and interpreting human society. Through genres such as bestiaries, fables, fairy tales and satirical treatises, we hope to better understand why theanimal is so well adapted to caricature man, and the animal kingdom lends itself to social, theological, and political allegory. More broadly, we would like to consider the import of literature—by its creation of hybrid and monstrous characters, its representation of the
intermingling of animal and human languages and worlds, and its approach to the relationship between them—in constructing a shared definition of life.

This graduate conference asks for participants interested in the various literary genres associated with the animal and animality, within larger frameworks of rationality, sociability, language, epistemology and the relationship between animality and humanity.

Papers, preferably in English, should be 20 minutes long. If presenting in French, we ask that you include a translation in English for distribution to our non-Francophone participants.

Please send proposals (max. 400 words) to: jhufranimalconf@gmail.com
Deadline : 01 February 2010

Keynote Speaker : Professor Paule Petitier – Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7

The collection will be unashamedly critical in approach, seeking to include articles that challenge systems of power which simultaneously organise conduct, violence, care and domination of nonhuman animals, from wildlife parks to factory farms. However, we also recognize there is an urgent need for indepth, inter-disciplinary theorisation that is able to map and challenge the lines of distinction between human and animal. We therefore encourage submissions from scholars working in a range of disciplines, interested in how Foucault might be used to consider human and animal relations in a broad sense. We welcome not only philosophical discussion but analysis of science, policy, and activist praxis. We encourage not simply the transfer of Foucauldian concepts but their effective adaptation to multispecies contexts.

Suggested topic areas include:

• Biopolitics;
• Ethics and the care of the self;
• Power and the political;
• Discourse and knowledge;
• Governmentality and conduct;
• Sovereignty and security;
• History of biology and science;
• Discipline, training and communication;
• Panopticism, surveillance, gaze, spectacle;
• Sexuality;
• Animal subjectivities;
• Heterotopias of interspecies contact;
• The animality of humanity;
• Humanism, language and the border of species.

For abstract submissions (of 500 words), or to discuss proposed contributions, please email either Matthew Chrulew at mchrulew@gmail.com or Dinesh Wadiwel at dwadiwel@gmail.com.

Abstract deadline: 28th February 2010.
Projected completed book chapter deadline: late 2010.

It’s safe to say that as of late-2009, Animal Studies (or Critical Animal Studies, depending on who you ask) has successfully passed it’s probationary period.  Since  Donna Haraway popularized the study of “the animal” in the humanities in 1985 (though many had been doing so since at least the 60′s [if not the 40's if you count Claude Shannon as "a humanist"]), dissertation after dissertation; sexy new book after sexy new book has served to solidify AS’s right to “serious” inquiry.

But it’s quantitative growth does not signify it’s incapacity for refinement, etc.  One area that perhaps is still being “fleshed-out” is zoosemiotics.  Besides Thomas Sebok’s work, little has been done on a large scale to this extent.  Theorists like Matthew Calarco and Cary Wolfe (whose work is truly admirable and will be referenced countless time in posts to come) discuss zoographies and zoontologies; who’s doing zoosemiotics?  At least one person:

The cat was chirping.

She was telling the zoosemiotician something, but it was heavily contextual, so he had to stop what he was doing, whatever that was, something with a pen and a Moleskine that looked like a guy fisting a wasp while Juliette Binoche watched, and observe the cat more closely.

The cat was chirping and looking at the front door, so the zoosemiotician opened the door and the cat went out. Three more came in, so he fed them.

It was like a story problem. One cat goes out, three come in, how many are eating? Two, because one has a thing whereby he won’t eat with the other cats unless you watch.

Obviously not hungry enough, was the zoosemiotician’s diagnosis. He was depressed. He had been reading about how stupid people are. That is, he had known it for a long time, that people are stupid, but god. He had made the mistake of reading about Fox news pie charts that were nonsense and Fox news survey results that added up to 120%, and he had watched that video where that guy interviews Palin supporters and not a single one can name a single actual Palin policy. Even accounting for bias and editing, it was a chilling thing to watch.

The zoosemiotician thinks, the Dunning-Kruger effect goes further towards explaining modern society than any other single explanation of anything.

The zoosemiotician’s wife comes into the kitchen. He offers her coffee.

“WTF is that in your journal? It looks like a guy fisting a wasp.”

The zoosemiotician chirps. His wife opens the front door.

A cat comes in.

http://www.metamorphosism.com/?p=3295

Can one have a career in zoosemiotics?  As much as one can have one in zoontologies, I think so.  Anthropological zoosemiotics (or, gulp, anthropo-zoosemiotics) articulates aspects of human-nonhuman animal interaction that were unsymbolizable previously, or at least, symbolizable only with difficulty and great ambiguity (and usually with heavy reliance on one or another discourse–most commonly, aesthetics–that may or may not be appropriate to the specificity of the interaction under investigation).

Lacanian’s are fond of saying that Lacan’s appropriation of semiotics articulated in Freud’s work what Freud himself could not by no fault of his own (so the story goes–and I don’t think without at least partial justification).  Insofar as semiotics, of if you prefer, semiosis, is of any worth, I think it will benefit the very much still emerging study of nonhuman animals, without eliding that which is specific to nonhuman animals; i.e. what the contributions of the majority of philosophically inflected studies of “the animal” attempt to signify.  To this extent, reference to Lacan is not without merit as he, at the very least, attempted to do precisely that.

Our fundamental assertion is that there is an irreconcilable tension between global capitalism and the theoretical school of posthumanism.  This is an essay full of zombies—the historical, folkloric zombie of Haitian origin, which reveals much about the subject position and its relationship to a Master/Slave dialectic; the living-dead zombie of contemporary film, who seems increasingly to be lurching off the screen and into our real world (as a metaphor, this zombie reveals much about the way we code inferior subjects as unworthy of life); and finally, we are putting forth a zombie that does not yet exist: a thought-experiment that exposes the limits of posthuman theory and shows that we can get posthuman only at the death of the subject.  Unlike Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” we do not propose that the position of the zombie is a liberating one—indeed, in its history, and in its metaphors, the zombie is most often a slave. However, our intention is to illustrate that the zombie’s irreconcilable body (both living and dead) raises the insufficiency of the dialectical model (subject/object) and suggests, with its own negative dialectic, that the only way to truly get posthuman is to become antisubject.

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

We propose that reading the zombie as an ontic/hauntic object reveals much about the crisis of human embodiment, the way power works, and the history of man’s subjugation and oppression of its “Others.” Herein, we trace the zombie from its Haitian origins to its most recent incarnations in popular culture. Given the fact that there are multiple valences in play, it seems best to designate the distinction typographically: there is the Haitian zombi, a body raised from the dead to labor in the fields, but with a deep association of having played a role in the Haitian Revolution (thus, simultaneously resonant with the categories of slave and slave rebellion); and there is also the zombie, the American importation of the monster, which in its cinematic incarnation has morphed into a convenient boogeyman representing various social concerns. The zombie can also be a metaphoric state claimed for oneself or imposed on someone else. This zombie has been made to stand for capitalist drone (Dawn of the Dead) and Communist sympathizer (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and, increasingly, viral contamination (28 Days Later ). In its passage from zombi to zombie, this figuration that was at first just a somnambulistic slave singly raised from the dead became evil, contagious, and plural. Our manifesto proclaims the future possibility of the zombii, a consciousless being that is a swarm organism, and the only imaginable specter that could really be posthuman.