INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL FOR SEMIOTIC AND STRUCTURAL STUDIES SUMMER SCHOOLS AND FESTIVAL: 25 YEARS SEMIOTICS IN IMATRA
We are pleased to announce the research seminars and International Summer School for Semiotic and Structural Studies. The seminars will be organized by the International Semiotics Institute (ISI) at Imatra and open to any semiotician interested in the topics given below. The director of the Summer School and ISI, is Professor Eero Tarasti.
Semiotics - study of communication and signification
Semiotics may run the gamut between a scientific discipline and a world-view. But however it is construed, it always involves signs. The terms stems from the Greek word seemeiootikee, which denotes the study of signs, what they represent and signify, and how we act and think in their universe. Goethe, in his time, could view everything as a symbol. How much truer that is today, when more and more man-made signs and signals emanate from all quarters! Never before has there been so much communication in the world, thanks to computers, mobile phones, and other electronic means of transmitting messages. But do people also have more to say to each other? Semiotics is a discipline that bravely confronts such questions at the start of the new millennium.
Finland, a land of semiotics
The Semiotic Society of Finland was founded at the end of the 1970s, when similar groups were starting in other countries. From a tiny beginning it has grown into one of the largest national societies of semiotics in the world. Today, the society hosts several annual symposia and publishes the quarterly Synteesi for research in the interrelationships of arts. Semiotics is now taught all over the country, and a network of these academic institutions is taking place. The most recent (since 1995) is the study program of Semiotics in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki, which particularly welcomes foreign students interested in all areas of the discipline. Together with the courses given by the International Semiotics Institute (ISI), and boasting a vast semiotic library, the University of Helsinki makes the ideal place for Ph.D. studies in the field.