Academic news in brief IX

1) Saturday - two days ago - I finished my quarterly report for the research project "The Cultural Heritage of Environmental Spaces. A Comparative Analysis Between Estonia and Norway" (5pp).
2) In the process of this year's doctoral attestation review, I was informed that my doctoral school should be the Estonian Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts (GSCSA) (application submitted).
3) The interview with professor in biosemiotics Kalevi Kull (my supervisor), conducted by me and Riin Magnus, has now been fully transcribed, and is in the process of being edited ("The bio-translator"). The final text will include a full biosemiotic bibliography, and replies to questions by Don Favareau, Timo Maran and Paul Cobley.
4) A couple of weeks ago, on the 21st of June, I met in Oslo with green criminologists Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen to develop our planned anthology on human-animal and human-nature relations. We have sketched the topics of around 18 chapters and discussed potential contributors. Invitations to participate will likely be sent in August.

5) The 'opponent' (commentator) at my presentation on illegal wolf hunting in the seminar series Kriminalpolitisk seminar (University of Oslo) in November will likely be professor of criminology Kjersti Ericsson (1944-). Program for the series appears here.
6) Yesterday John Deely - who will this autumn publish Medieval Philosophy Redefined - agreed that we will submit a book proposal (for softcover publication) involving the four first semioethics interviews. I am very much looking forward to that enterprise.
7) Faithful to tradition, Marcello Barbieri has published photos from the 10th gathering in biosemiotics, which took place in Braga, Portugal, a week ago.
8) Through my company, Spør Filosofen, I have been booked for a philosophical presentation of "The future of the growth economy" at Aker Maritime Hydraulics (by the Aker MH philosophy and literature group).

Previous posts:
Academic news in brief VIII
Academic news in brief VII
Academic news in brief VI
Academic news in brief V
Academic news in brief IV
Academic news in brief III
Academic news in brief II
Academic news in brief I (March 30, 2009)

Third semioethics interview approaching publication

I am right now in the process of proof-reading "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness", which will be published in the book Semiotics: Theory and applications.

Nova Publishers have now launched a site for the collection, which is edited by Steven C. Hamel, and included in the "Languages and Linguistics" series. The book, which will cost no less than 129$, is scheduled for publication in the 4th quarter of 2010. Below is Nova's book description and the table of contents (any emphasis is mine).

Book Description:
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches: Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. This book discusses the theory and application of semiotics across a broad spectrum and has gathered current research from around the globe.

Table of Contents:
Preface

Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling through Analyzing Changes in the Material Culture of Schools (Kostas Dimopoulos, Associate Professor of Learning Materials, Dept of Social and Educational Policy, University of Peloponnese, Greece)

Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis (Tahir Wood, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa)

Language, Emotion, and Health: A Semiotic Perspective on the Writing Cure (Louise Sundararajan, Chulmin Kim, Martina Reynolds, Chris R. Brewin, Rochester Regional Forensic Unit, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, and others)

Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology and its Implications for Psychological Research (Agnes Petocz, University of Western Sydney)

How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in their Schools: A Case Study of a Discursive Construction (Douglas J. Glick, Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York)

The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness (Morten Tønnessen, Department of Semiotics, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia, and others)

A Semiotics Discourse Analysis Framework: Understanding Meaning Making in Science Education Contexts (Kamini Jaipal-Jamani, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont., Canada)

Semiotic Constraints of the Biological Organization (Abir U. Igamberdiev, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department of Biology, St. John’s, NL, Canada)

Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy: Review of Stefanowitsch, Anatol, Gries, Stefan Th. (eds.) (Zhiying Xin, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, P. R. China)

The Role of Sign Vehicles in Mediating Teachers’ Mathematical Problem Solving (Sinikka Kaartinen, Timo Latomaa, University of Oulu, Finland)

Interaction and Interactivity: A Semiotic Commentary (Jan M. Broekman, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania)

Multimodal Stylistics: The Happy Marriage of Stylistics and Semiotics (Nina Nørgaard, Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark)

Brief report from Braga

I enjoyed being in Portugal very much (my first visit there).

The talks I liked the most were these:
1. Alexei SHAROV: "Functional information: towards synthesis of biosemiotics and cybernetics"
2. Günther WITZANI: "Biocommunication of cancer cells"
3. Marcello BARBIERI: "On the origin of language"

My talk ''We the living: The reception of Uexküll in Norwegian ecophilosophy" (focusing on Arne NÆSS and Peter Wessel ZAPFFE) was given Friday 25th at 11-11.30, and was subject to questions from Don FAVAREAU, Peter HARRIES-JONES and Jesper HOFFMEYER.

That same Friday I chaired the afternoon session (stepping in for Marcella FARIA, who was not there), which included these talks:
Dennis WATERS: "Von Neumann's theory of self-reproducing automata: A useful framework for biosemiotics?"
Siohoi IENG: "A biosemiotic formulation of survival strategies for robots"
Gérard BATTAIL: "Identity, species, order"
Peter BARLOW: "To life on Earth: Messages from the Moon"
Isabel FERREIRA: "Interactive bodies: The semiosis of architectural forms - a case study"
Ted BAENZIGER: "Alpha and omega: the oldest and newest example of interphylogenetic semiotics: the orchid"

Seagull drama (YouTube)

Seagull drama just outside my living room window

Seagull drama II - now on a low roof

Seagull drama just outside our kitchen window

Presentation at criminology seminar

I have agreed to give a talk in an open criminology seminar, "Kriminalpolitisk seminar", arranged by Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law (University of Oslo), November 11th (14.15-16.00). The topic is "Illegal wolf hunting" ("Ulovlig jakt på ulv").

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4. Umwelt Transition: Uexküllian Phenomenology (research plan) 381
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7. Environmental problems in light of Gabriel Marcel's distinction problem/mystery 306
8. POSTER The Nature View Held by Environmentalists 280
9. ABSTRACT The Nature View Held by Environmentalists 253
10. Signs Grow, But Should They? Semioethics and the Dominant Semiosis of Homo Sapiens 218
11. Reversing the Brain Drain 191
12. The Nature View Held by Environmentalists (Attitudes in the Norwegian Environmental Establishment) 163
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Academic news in brief VIII

1. The April 2011 conference Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations, for which I am part of the organizing team, has announced publicly its four keynote speakers: Colin Allen, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Graham Huggan and David Rothenberg.

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2. The 10th Gathering in Biosemiotics, to be arranged in Braga, Portugal June 22-27th, has some time ago announced its program, where my talk is scheduled for presentation Friday June 25th at 9-9.30. The abstract of "We The Living: The Reception of Uexküll in Norwegian Ecophilosophy" is to be found at page 42 in the abstract book.

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3. Since the last "Academic news in brief" was posted May 7th, I have conducted further Michael Polanyi work papers, and thereby, as it turned out, concluded the course work in The philosophy of Michael Polanyi. I have started reading Marjorie Grene, and expect to write a paper at some not too distant point in time on Polanyi and Grene and their relevance for matters of biosemiotics (and vice-versa).

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4. Quite some time ago, I was told my first blurb ever was not included after all in Paul Cobley (ed.): Realism for the 21st Century. A John Deely Reader, published October 2009.

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5. Monday - two days ago - I wrote my Attestation Review report for my third year as a Ph.D. student (progress review report), which includes a Revised plan for research and study for the academic year 2010/2011. 13 pp. The attestation review meeting takes place Thursday 17th of June, but I do not have the chance to be there in person.