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By afelice, April 1, 2013 2:48 pm

The Semiotics Workshop is pleased to announce its 2013 Spring Quarter Theme and Schedule:

“Semiotic spatialities”

Despite, or because of, the ways in which semiotic forms constantly travel, there are many attempts to keep them within boundaries of space and place. Papers this quarter will address how semiotic forms are bound, maintained and controlled within particular socio-geographic milieux.

Schedule

April 11 – “Anatomy of a failed raid: gendered harassment on the internet and the metapragmatics of trolling”

Giovanni Ricci

PhD Student, Anthropology

Univ. of Chicago

Discussant: Michael Castelle

April 25 – “‘The Irish Appelation’: How and why whiskey became ‘Irish’ in the early modern British imaginary”

Megan Edwards

PhD Candidate, Anthropology

Univ. of Chicago

Discussant: Colin Halverson

Joint meeting with IAW, in Haskell 315

May 16 – ”Chronotope and Crisis: Interdiscursivity and the Semiotic Production of Violence”

Gabe Tusinski

PhD Candidate, Anthropology

Univ. of Chicago

Discussant: Giovanni Ricci

Meeting in Haskell Mezzanine Room 131

May 23 – “Warring standards: Contesting the enregisterment of Cosmopolitan Mandarin”

Qing Zhang

Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Univ. of Arizona

Discussant: Angelica Felice

June 6 – TBA

Erik Skjon

PhD Candidate

Univ. of Chicago

Discussant: Elizabeth Brummel

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By afelice, January 2, 2013 6:31 pm

The Semiotics Workshop is pleased to announce our Winter Quarter theme:

“Semiotic Flows”

Semiotic forms are constantly crossing boundaries – national, linguistic, disciplinary, institutional – and much invisible labor is undertaken both to maintain and to convert them, and to de- and recontextualize them.  Papers this quarter will address the ways in which these forms circulate and the issues that result from the transductions they undergo.

Schedule:

January 10: “‘Communication’ as a Factor of Production: Language, Morality, and the ‘New Work Order’ in St. Petersburg”

Susanne Cohen

Lecturer, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Tanya Shpigel

January 24: “Ritual Capital: Exchange Value and Market Discourse in a Diamond Trading Room”

Filipe Calvão

Phd Candidate, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Tracey Rosen

February 7: “’We Rule You’: The Visual Epistemology of Capitalism as a Pyramid”

Eric Triantafillou

PhD Student, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Xueting Liu

February 21: “Lovin’ on the Women of Boystown: The Triadic Relationship between Sex Workers, Missionaries, and God”

Sarah Luna

PhD Candidate, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Molly Cunningham

March 7: “Fistbumps and Phonies: Insincerity, deception and lies in urban Kenya”

Elizabeth Brummel

Phd Candidate, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Ali Feser

March 21: “Reported Speech as an Authentication Tactic in Computer-Mediated Communication”

Graham M. Jones

Associate Professor, Anthropology

MIT

Discussant: Elise Kramer

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By afelice, November 13, 2012 12:12 pm

The Semiotics Workshop is pleased to announce an additional meeting this quarter in conjunction with the African Studies Workshop:

Nov. 20th: “Tracking Time-Travelling Translators or Transducing ‘Semiotecs?’ between Grahamstown and Beijing: Colonial Re-Iterations, Translational Labor and the Making of Aspirational Histories”

Jay Schutte

Phd Student, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Zebulon Dingley

*Please note that this meeting will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 20th in Wilder House at 5pm.

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By afelice, September 28, 2012 10:26 am

The Semiotics Workshop is pleased to announce our Autumn Quarter theme:

“Semiotic Creativity/Expertise”

(Ethno)metapragmatics allow us to enshrine (meta)semiotic forms in institutions and hierarchies.  The papers presented this quarter will address the expertise created by such canonicalization and the modalities of creativity that emerge as a result of the tensions inherent to such restriction.

Schedule:

October 11: “Speaking for the Voiceless: Metaphors of Power and Agency in American Political Discourse”

Elise Kramer

PhD Candidate, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Averill Leslie

October 25: “Representations of Meaning by ‘Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz”

David Larsen

Master Teacher, Liberal Studies

New York University

Discussant: Yaqub Hilal

November 8: “‘We are not Labor’: The Hazards of Training in the Indian Construction Sector”

Adam Sargent

PhD Candidate, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Julia Kowalski

November 29: “The transitivity and intransitivity of ‘la pensée’ in a radical French philosophy department”

Eli Thorkelson

PhD Candidate, Anthropology

University of Chicago

Discussant: Jan Schutte