Technologies of Semiosis

18^th Annual Michicagoan Conference

May 6–7, 2016

 

The annual Michicagoan Conference focuses on the social and cultural analysis of semiotic forms centering on language, providing graduate students with an attentive forum in which to present their work and have it discussed by faculty and students from the Universities of Michigan and Chicago and beyond. We welcome work from post-baccalaureate students at all stages, and encourage participants to submit formal conference papers as well as to discuss their dissertation proposals and research reports. Commentators for each panel are drawn from participating faculty. The conference promotes ongoing scholarly exchange and collaboration among students and faculty of the two host institutions and regional affiliates.

 

This year, meeting at the University of Chicago, our theme is “Technologies of Semiosis.” Our keynote speaker this year is John Durham Peters, A. Craig Baird Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. We seek papers taking semiotic, sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological approaches to the ways in which language and other semiotic forms are intertwined with technology. We encourage participants to interpret the concept of technology broadly, focusing on one of the themes below or expanding into other domains:

 

•      Media: How are the semiotic affordances of different media – be they written text-artifacts, television, radio, film, or more novel technologies of communication – used to interactional ends? How do different types of media intersect, or, as affordances, overlap? What temporalities do they call forth? What kind of material infrastructure do they rely on and bring into being? How do different artefactual modalities of representation, like graphic inscription, audio transcription, or translation across media, function as kinds of semiotic technologies?

 

•      Language as technology: How can language and its use serve as a kind of technology? In what ways can language be understood as a kind of technique, knowledge, skill or craft? How does an attention to different sensory modalities, like the visual and the sonic, contribute to this sort of analysis? Here we might consider such concepts as voice, noise and gesture, among other things.

 

•      Emergent structures of machine-human interaction: Moving away from face-to-face interaction, what of non-face-to-face human-machine/machine-human interaction? What consequences do such interactional modalities have for language? What new theoretical approaches might need to be elaborated to account for machine-mediated human interaction? What might attention to these microstructures reveal about larger scale processes?

Presenters will have 15 minutes to present research papers or project proposals, and they will be asked to submit completed papers to their assigned discussant by April 22nd. There is no registration fee for the conference. Transportation will be covered for all Michigan presenters. Meals will be covered for all registered attendees.

 

To propose a presentation, please submit the following materials, as email text or attachment, to michicagoan2016@gmail.com by March 11, 2016:

1. Title of presentation
2. University and departmental affiliation
3. Abstract of 250 words or less
4. Audio-visual requirements

 

All other inquiries, including questions concerning access for persons with disabilities, can be directed to Hannah McElgunn (mcelgunn@uchicago.edu) or Janet Connor (jeconnor@uchicago.edu).