World report: Argentina

The 9th Congress of the Argentine Association for Semiotic Studies (AAS)

 

The conference was held from September 5th to 7th, 2013, in Mendoza city, Argentina, organized by the National University of Cuyo, under the coordination of Estela María Zalba. The program was arranged in simultaneous sessions of papers organized by subject, panels of discussion by specialists (on themes such as cartography of semiotic research in Argentina, semiotics and discourse analysis, semiotics and media), and three plenary lectures delivered by recognized international semioticians: Ivan Darrault-Harris (France), reflecting on where is semiotics going to, Eliseo Verón (Argentina), on social semiosis 25 years after, and José Enrique Finol (Venezuela), on anthroposemiotics. Information (in Spanish): congresosemioticauncuyo.blogspot.com.ar

Associated with the conference, the following special events also took place:

• The last issues of the journal DeSignis (Journal of the Latin American Federation of Semiotics) were presented and commented by Fernando Andacht, María Teresa Dalmasso, and José Enrique Finol; and the next planned issues were announced by José Luis Fernández and Oscar Steimberg.
• Previously to the conference, on September 2-4, Ivan Darrault-Harris delivered a seminar about “Children’s identity and ludicrous behavior”, and was distinguished with an honorary doctorate by the National University of Cuyo.
• On September 6, the assembly of the association was held. As a result of that Dr. José Luis Fernández was elected as the new president, and Dr. Gabriela Simón as its vice-president. The next congress of the AAS will be held at the University of Salta, in the north of Argentina, in 2015. Information about the AAS (in Spanish): aasemiotica.com.ar

Two books related to semiotics published in Argentina in 2013

Semióticas. Las semióticas de los géneros, de los estilos, de la transposición [The semiotics of genres, styles, transposition], in Spanish
Oscar Steimberg
Buenos Aires, 2013. Publisher: Eterna Cadencia Editora
ISBN 978-987-1673-83-4

This is an enlarged and updated re-edition of one of the most important books of Argentine semiotic theory. The volume includes a series of papers from the eighties until nowadays, in addition to the texts of Semiótica de los medios masivos [Semiotics of mass media] (1993), a classical book on popular genres and their passage to the mass media.

Leyendo historietas. Textos sobre relatos visuales y humor gráfico [Reading cartoons. Texts about visual stories and graphic humor], in Spanish
Oscar Steimberg
Buenos Aires, 2013. Publisher: Eterna Cadencia Editora
ISBN 978-987-1673-84-1

In this volume, the original edition of Leyendo historietas (published in 1977, and including texts from 1968 to 1976) is enlarged with texts on the subject produced by the author from 1979 until nowadays.