Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations

Program outline

4 April 5 April 6 April 7 April 8 April

9.30/10.00 –11.30 Sessions (3 talks): Sessions (4 talks): Sessions (4 talks): Sessions (4 talks):
1. Theory and history 1. Communication in 1. Domestication and 1. Cultural and
of zoosemiotics I animals II hybrid environments I anthropological
2. Philosophical 2. Perspectives in 2. Animals and perspectives III
perspectives I zoosemiotics I literature II 2. Domestication and
3. Animals and 3. Theory and history hybrid environments II
literature I of zoosemiotics II
12.00 –13.30 Field trip Plenary lecture. Plenary lecture. Plenary lecture. Plenary lecture. David
Colin Allen Jesper Hoffmeyer Graham Huggan Rothenberg
13.30 –14.30 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
14.30 –16.00/16.30 Sessions (3 talks): Sessions (4 talks): Sessions (3 talks): Sessions (4 talks):
1. Communication in 1. Perspectives in 1. Perspectives in 1. Philosophical
animals I zoosemiotics II zoosemiotics III perspectives III
2. Philosophical 2. Cultural and 2. Animals and art II 2. Animals and
perspectives II anthropological + Graduate seminar literature III
perspectives II + Graduate seminar
+ Graduate seminar
16.30/17.00 –18.00/18.30 Sessions (3 talks): Roundtable. Futures of Roundtable. Zoo as a Roundtable. Animals
1. Animals and art I zoosemiotics semiotic environment and ecocriticism
2. Cultural and
anthropological
perspectives I
18.00 Welcome 20.00 Conference
session dinner

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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.

11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break

12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. Colin Allen. Umwelt or Umwelten? How should shared
representation be understood given such diversity?

13.30 – 14.30 Lunch

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.

16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break

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.

Animals and literature I

Roland Borgards. Literary animal experimentation.
Laura Byrne. Creative Intuition: D. H. Lawrence and humananimal mind.
Sandra Grötsch. Animal representation and attitudes of humans toward non-humans in fantasy
literature.
Maria Laakso. Representation of humans in tradition of animal fantasy.

11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break

12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. Jesper Hoffmeyer. From genetic to semiotic scaffolding.

13.30 – 14.30 Lunch

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.

16.30 – 17.00 Coffee break

17.00 – 18.30 Roundtable. Futures of zoosemiotics. Chair Morten Tønnessen.

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.

Animals and literature II

Anne Milne. Feral signs: eighteenth-century British poets and the marginal animal.
Onno Oerlemans. The semiotics of bird poems.
Karoliina Lummaa. Bird-like poetry? Sauli Sarkanen’s “In the morning” and Timothy
Morton’s ecomimesis.
Killian Quigley. Animals, nature, and empire in A Voyage Round the World.

Theory and history of zoosemiotics II

Paul Cobley. Codes, coding, communication and semiotics
Matthew Chrulew. Sebeok, Hediger, Foucault: on power and communication in human-
animal relations.
Robert Rose. Insider information for real outsiders: a fresh look at Peter Marler’s “The logical
analysis of animal communication”.
Timo Maran. A search for the identity of zoosemiotics: communication and semiosis.

11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break

12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. Graham Huggan. Attenborough, colonialism and the British
tradition of nature documentary.

13.30 – 14.30 Lunch

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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.

Animals and art II

Arja Rosenholm. Animal representations in post-perestroika and contemporary Russian
Women’s art and literature.
Anna Sharibzhanova. Origin of the composition with heraldic treated by feline predators in
the medieval Islamic art: fragment from the cope of St. Mesme of Chinon (National Museum
of the Middle Age – The Roman Baths of Cluny, Paris).
Jennifer Willet. Cell Break: a case study for interspecies interrelations in the biological
sciences.

Seminar of Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts. Animals. Culture. Environment

16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break

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

Domestication and hybrid environments II

Nelly Mäekivi. Human animal in the zoo — trying to help zoo biology with semiotics
Mark Haywood. Semiotics of colonial and post-colonial displaying of indigenous animals in
South Africa zoos
Riin Magnus. Training the guide-dogs of the blind with a “dog-carriage” method: the historic
background and semiotic footing.
Małgorzata Zofia Kozłowska. Preschool children understanding of dogs’ body language.

11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break

12.00 – 13.30 Plenary lecture. David Rothenberg. Animal music, animal aesthetics

13.30 – 14.30 Lunch

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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.

Philosophical perspectives III

Silver Rattasepp. A posthuman view on humans and animals.
Jean-Claude Gens. Jakob von Uexküll and Aldo Leopold in dialog.
Luanne Frank. The reciprocal gaze between human and animal: an inquiry.
Artis Svece. Practical anthropomorphism and its limits.

Seminar of Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts. Animals. Culture. Environment

16.30 – 17.00 Coffee break

17.00 – 18.30 Roundtable Animals and ecocriticism. Chair Wendy Wheeler.