"In arriving at structuralism, literary studies simply join the
general tendency of contemporary thought. Throughout almost the entire
realm of contemporary scholarship the discovery of the dynamic
relations which pervade its material has proven to be an effective
modus operandi ? for example, in the disciplines of the arts and in
general aesthetics, in psychology, sociology, linguistics, economics,
and even in the natural sciences" (J. Mukarovský, 1934)

The Prague School project developed a functionalistic, semiotic
approach to linguistics and literature that expanded the legacy of
late Formalists such as R. Jakobson and J. Tynyanov. Despite
significant contributions by J. Mukarovský, J. Veltruský and J.
Vodicka, among many others, Prague semiotics is still unknown to many
scholars today. The international symposium "Structuralism(s) Today:
Prague, Paris, Tartu, and Beyond" aims not only to revaluate the
Prague project, but to study it in relation to French
Structuralism/Post-Structuralism and Tartu School. Scholars worldwide
are encouraged to join the conferences to be held at the University of
Toronto in October 11-14, 2007. Organizers are currently accepting
proposals. Suggested topics are:

- Structuralism: Poetics and/or Aesthetics? Idea of literariness,
poeticity, and theatricality in 21th Century.

- Defamiliarization: from deautomatization to Verfremdung-Effekt.

- Literary History: Vodicka?s model of a history of reception;
theories of immanent change vs. theories of correlation of literary
and non-literary series.

- Semiotics of drama: drama vs. theatre; theatricality; drama, lyric,
and epic as sources for theatrical works.

- Literary genres: the role of parody in the evolution of forms;
genres and polysystems.

- The problem of verse language: semantic gesture, from the verse line
to the whole poem; poem as a web of phonic, syntactic, and semantic
strata.

- Culture as system: Tartu School and its expanded cultural studies;
Lotman?s semiosphere; semiotic analyses of culture as text.

- Semiotics of Film and Visual Arts.

500-words abstracts must be submitted to structuralismtoday_at_gmail.com
by April 15. Accepted contributors will be contacted by early May.
Please keep in mind that all participants are required to be fluent in
English, since both lectures and discussion will only be given in that
language.

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                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
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Received on Mon Mar 19 2007 - 14:50:51 EST