Program Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations
Program Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations
Program Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations
Program outline
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Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations
Program
Tuesday 5 April
10.00 – 11.30
Theory and history of zoosemiotics I
Stephen Pain. Significance in animal communication.
Kalevi Kull. Zoosemiotics is the study of animal knowledge.
Nataliya A. Abieva. What is common in human and animal semantic communication?
Philosophical perspectives I
Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino. Is Peter’s dog barking intentionally? A Husserlian critique of
the Latratus Canis in Abelard’s zoosemiotic theory.
Ian Ground. “Only in the application that a living being makes”: Wittgenstein, signs and
animal minds.
W. John Coletta. Evolutionary bodies of knowledge; or, the evolutionary phenomenology of
J. J. Audubon, Georges Bataille, Theodore Roethke, and Octavia Butler.
12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. Colin Allen. Umwelt or Umwelten? How should shared
representation be understood given such diversity?
14.30 – 16.00
Communication in animals I
Brianne Donaldson. How dogs and cats explained what data could not: writing neuroscience
at its “othermost”.
Sofia Panteleeva, Zhargal Danzanov, Zhanna Reznikova. A new method for evaluating the
complexity of animal behavioural patterns based on the notion of Kolmogorov complexity.
Rachele Malavasi, Almo Farina. The sound of music – an hypothesis on heterospecific
cooperation in songbirds.
Philosophical perspectives II
Elisa Aaltola. Animal suffering and phenomenological persuasion.
Les Mitchell. Portraying purpose in the lives of nonhumans.
Farouk Y. Seif. Dialogue with Kishtta: a semiotic revelation of the paradox of life and death.
16.30 – 18.30
Animals and art I
Jessica Ullrich. Animal minds and minding the animal in contemporary art.
Joanne Bristol. Signs, marks, gestures: New Art Examiner.
Sonja Britz. Of the colour of snow or milk.
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Cultural and anthropological perspectives I
Nils Lindahl Elliot. On the social semeiotics of wildlife observation: the case of Barro
Colorado Island.
Jesse Bia. Constructing Leviathan: “The domestic manifestations and transnational
ramifications of anthropomorphism in Japan and the United States”.
Anna Mossolova. Some perspectives on animal representation in the light of human masking
practice.
Rita Turner. Teaching zoosemiotics: discourse about and representations of animals and the
nonhuman world in college humanities classrooms.
Wednesday 6 April
9.30 – 11.30
Communication in animals II
Stanislav Komárek. Volucella bombylans – the mimicry puzzle.
Zhanna Reznikova, Boris Ryabko. An information-theoretic approach for analysis of animal
communication, with ant “language” as a model.
Jacob Bull. Reflection and refraction: where the airy and aquatic meet.
Arlene Tucker. This is fun: a basis for the criteria and categorization of play.
Perspectives in zoosemiotics I
Katya Mandoki. Zoo-aesthetics: a natural step after Darwin.
Karel Kleisner. Geometric morphometrics – a possible method for zoosemiotics.
Elina Vladimirova. Semiotics characteristics of mammal’s adaptation in natural conditions.
Andrew Whitehouse. The language of sound: exploring the interaction between people and
birds.
12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. Jesper Hoffmeyer. From genetic to semiotic scaffolding.
14.30 – 16.30
Perspectives in zoosemiotics II
Felice Cimatti, Marco Mazzeo. Uexküll’s heritage: do human animals live in an Umwelt?
Morten Tønnessen. The Umwelt trajectories of wolves, sheep and people.
Katya Mandoki. Performative acts among animals? Considering zoo-pragmatics
Mara Woods. An affective model of perception-action.
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Cultural and anthropological perspectives II
Dagmar Schmauks. Predators, locusts, and stupid cows. Animal names as swear words.
Eliane Ramos Espírito Santo, Eraldo Medeiros Costa Neto. Animals in advertising: a semiotic
study of animal representation in the facades of commercial establishments and billboards in
the city of Feira de Santana, Bahia State, Northeastern Brazil.
Adam Dodd. Insects to amuse and instruct: popular entomology and anthropomorphism in the
nineteenth century: L. M. Budgen’s Episodes of Insect Life.
Larissa Budde. The semiotics of insects and the hive in popular culture.
Seminar of Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts Animals. Culture. Environment.
Thursday 7 April
9.30 – 11.30
Domestication and hybrid environments I
Marco Stella. “But ask the animals, and they will teach you”. Domestication as a zoosemiotic
problem.
Aleksei Turovski. An attempt for a semiotic approach to charismatic leadership in eusocial
animal species.
Wendy Wheeler. Captivation and ecstasy: animal immersion and human enchantment.
12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. Graham Huggan. Attenborough, colonialism and the British
tradition of nature documentary.
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14.30 – 16.00
Perspectives in zoosemiotics III
Gerald Ostdiek. Minding signs, the semiotics of Chauncey Wright’s psychozoology.
Ralph R. Acampora. The (proto-)ethical significance of semiosis: when and how does one
become somebody who matters?
Jonathan Beever. Toward a zoosemiotic approach to animal ethics.
Seminar of Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts. Animals. Culture. Environment
16.30 – 18.00 Roundtable. Zoo as a semiotic environment. Chair Nils Lindahl Elliot.
Friday 8 April
9.30 – 11.30
Cultural and anthropological perspectives III
Art Leete. Dog in the worldview of the Komi hunters.
Palmira Fontes da Costa. Representations of the elephant in sixteenth-century Portuguese
India.
Christos Lynteris. Speaking marmots, deaf hunters: animal-human semiotic breakdown as the
cause of the Manchurian pneumonic plague of 1910–11.
Renata Sõukand, Raivo Kalle, Ingvar Svanberg. From repelling to killing: human-insect
relationship in Estonian folk tradition
12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. David Rothenberg. Animal music, animal aesthetics
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14.30 – 16.30
Animals and literature III
Tobias Menely. Georgic semiosphere.
Kadri Tüür. Like a fish out of water: literary representations of fish.
Maki Eguchi. Representation of sheep in modern Japanese literature: from Natsume Sōseki to
Murakami Haruki.
Taija Kaarlenkaski. Communicating with the cow: human-animal interaction in written
narratives.
Seminar of Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts. Animals. Culture. Environment