NASS Vilnius 2021

“Aklas Edipas” by Vincas Kisarauskas (licenced under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The XII conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies

“Meaning in Perception and the Senses”

Vilnius University

5–7 November 2021

Vilnius University Faculty of Philology, 5 Universiteto st., Vilnius

The program of the event can be downloaded from here.

The book of abstracts, edited by the organizers, can be downloaded from here.

Call for papers (download pdf)

THE XII NASS CONFERENCE was hosted by the Algirdas Julius Greimas Centre for Semiotics and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The conference addressed perception and the senses. Perception and the senses are, for all sentient species, the gateway to the environment and to other organisms and individuals. As such, they are instrumental in comprehending and constructing the world as experienced and lived, and in many respects indistinguishable from semiosis and meaning. This makes their study in semiotics a necessary task.

As a constitutive element of experience and signification, perception and the senses are also an important element in media, cultures, worldviews and histories. Perception and the senses can be construed as a pliable conductor for intermediality, for our imaginaries, and for our bonds to environments and other sentient and sensitive beings as well as ourselves.

This conference focused on how theories of meaning are positioned vis-à-vis perception and senses. The conference papers investigated the relations between perception and the senses and a broad range of semiotic concepts – from representation and semiosis to language, signification, modalities and modelling.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS were Irina Melnikova (Vilnius University), Frederik Stjernfelt (Aalborg University), Irene Mittelberg (RWTH Aachen University), Jacques Fontanille (University of Limoges), and Kay O’Halloran (University of Liverpool).

REGISTRATION AND CONFERENCE FEE

In order to register for NASS XII, payment of a conference fee was required.
The early bird registration fee is 90€; the deadline for early bird registration has been extended to 1 September, 2021.
The late registration fee is 110€, and the deadline is 15 October, 2021.
The fee covers attendance, coffee breaks, lunch, and a conference program booklet.
Part of the fee (30 €) covers NASS membership for the period of 2021–2023.
There will also be a conference dinner, to be paid for separately. We will provide information later on.

The participants at NASS XII Vilnius.
The participants at NASS XII at Vilnius, 2021.

GRADUATE STUDENT GRANTS AND AWARDS
Between 5 to 10 graduate students presenting at NASS XII were supported financially by the association with 250 € each. The best graduate student presentation was awarded a prize of 300 €.

Graduate student grant winners were:

1. Chávez Barreto Israel Eugenio, University of Tartu
2. Declerck Sophie Anne, Loughborough University, London
3. Fadeev Aleksandr, University of Tartu
4. Frascaroli Jacopo, University of York
4. Kundrotaite Ausra, University of Vilnius
5. Lewis Amelia, independent researcher, current affiliation: Queen’s University, Belfast
6. Miyamoto Oscar, University of Tartu
7. Nayaruddin Muzayin, University of Tartu
8. Tragel Elli Marie, University of Tartu
10. Rahmanova Aynur, Tallinn University

NASS XII scientific committee awarded the best student presentation prize of the NASS XII, “Meaning in Perception and the Senses”, to Eugenio Israel Chávez Barreto, a PhD student at Tartu University Department of Semiotics, for his paper ‘On Modeling Systems and Semiotic Structures’. Congratulations, Israel!

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Paulius Jevsejevas (conference chair: paulius.jevsejevas@flf.vu.lt)
Magdalena Slavinska (conference secretary: magdalena.slavinska@flf.vu.lt)
Alin Olteanu (chair of the scientific committee: alin.olteanu@rwth-aachen.de)

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Øyvind Eide (University of Cologne), Sara Lenninger (Lund University), Lauri Linask (Tallinn University), Juha Ojala (University of Oulu), Alin Olteanu (RWTH Aachen University, Kaunas University of Technology), Tiit Remm (University of Tartu), Inesa Sahakyan (Grenoble Alpes University), Morten Tønnessen (University of Stavanger)