On 15 October 2022 at 11am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Baranna Baker and Sofia Berstein will present on “Songbirds of the Primate World”.
Baranna Baker is an independent scholar who explores semiotics through the lenses of quantum physics and literature. She studied philosophy under the acclaimed semiotician, John Deely, at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. In her current work, she applies semiotic principles to literature, especially as concerns the acts of writing and reading fiction. She also plays with the way the quantum world affects our perceived reality and how that reality can be explained by the interplay of semiotics and quantum physics, via the action of signs. She has been published in Semiotica, Chinese Semiotic Studies, The American Journal of Semiotics, and Semiotics, the yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America. She is the associate editor of the latter two works and has in addition edited numerous papers, articles, and books relating to the field of semiotics, including proofreading John Deely’s book “On the Path of the Sign: Medieval Philosophy Redefined as the Latin Age” (read her review).
After receiving the M.Sc. degree in Primate Behavior and Ecology from Central Washington University in 2012, Sofia Bernstein pursued her doctorate in the Departments of Ecology and Social Behavior and Cognition and Learning at the PRI – Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan. While at the PRI, Bernstein was also a member of the Leading Graduate Program in PWS – Primatology and Wildlife Science, a highly selective program for graduate students at Kyoto University, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Sofia’s dissertation, which was supervised by Drs. Michael Huffman and Hiroki Koda, was entitled “The Vocal Repertoire of Tibetan Macaques in Mt. Huangshan, China: A Quantitative Analysis, Congeneric Comparisons, and Species-Specific Derived Calls”. Bernstein has taught a wide array of courses including biostatistics, introductory courses in biology and anthropology, research methods and research design for anthropology students, and primatology specific courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. In 2017 Sofia was awarded a special appointment position that enabled her to supervise graduate students.
Commentary will be provided by Susan Mancino (Assistant Professor at Saint Mary’s College) and Amelia Lewis (Royal Society of Biology, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour)
2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website
This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.
