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Evolutionary Love: Relations and Identities in a Virtual World
The Semiotic Society of America
40th Annual Meeting
Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of evolutionary love is behind the theme of this year’s conference, which prompts an exploration into the digital age of virtual relationships and identities. How have these relationships grown, or changed, in our new worlds of digital communication, multimedial art, and virtual realities? Who are we now, in this new environment, and how are we to know ourselves? How have we changed in our new modes of connectedness, of friendship, of love? Where is our center, and where is that Other with whom we have dialogue? Have we discovered, or slipped into, a newly digitalized, more extensively virtual, postmodern, and intertextual web of subjectivity? What are the consequences for authentic encounter in this world? What is preserved, what is lost, what is transformed into something radically new? And where are we heading, as individuals, families, societies, communities?
As always, we welcome abstracts on any subject with a connection to semiotics (both theoretical and applied), not solely those inspired by this year’s theme. We encourage you to reach out to your semiotically-inclined colleagues by organizing thematic sessions or panels, as well as submitting individual papers and posters. Our Society is interdisciplinary and international, and we welcome voices from all communities.
The 2015 Program Committee
- Robert S. Hatten (Chair), The University of Texas at Austin
- Mariana Bockarova, University of Toronto
- Isaac E. Catt, Duquesne University
- Javier Clavere, Berea College
- Deborah Eicher-Catt, Pennsylvania State University, York
- Gilad Elbom, Oregon State University