The Semiotic Society of America (SSA) met for its 43rd annual conference at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky on October 3-7, 2018. The conference was hosted locally by the Executive Director of the Semiotic Society, Javier Clavere and his colleagues at Berea College, and the chair of Program Committee, Farouk Seif. The theme of the conference was the “Signs of Resilience in a Complex World,” emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of semiotics. Berea College and Boone Tavern in Berea, Kentucky, provided an excellent venue for our scholarly exchange of ideas, and the people of the surrounding community provided a wonderful experience for the conference. There were over 120 research papers presented by participants from around the world in addition to plenary speakers and special panels.

Keynote speakers included Dr. Ivo Ibri, Professor of Philosophy from The Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil, and Dr. Wendy Wheeler, Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Cultural Inquiry from London Metropolitan University, UK. Dr. Ibri discussed “The Semiotic Resilient Mind—Conflictual and Agapic Relationship between Logic and Emotional Interpretants,” and Dr. Wheeler addressed “Resilience in a Time of Semiocide: Against the Murder of Natural and Cultural Meanings.” There were also two plenary lectures. Farouk Seif, Professor Emeritus at Antioch University Seattle presented “The Audacity of Design and the Resilience of Signs,” and Michael Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Semiotic Studies at Brown University presented “Language as Semiosis: A Neo-Structuralist Perspective in the Light of Pragmaticism”. Deborah Eicher-Catt, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania State University and President of the Semiotic Society of America, gave her presidential address entitled, “The Resilience of Enchantment in the Semiotic Resonance of Voice.” Dr. Eicher-Catt also recently guest edited a special issue (Vol. 4/2) for the new Chinese journal called, “Language and Semiotic Studies” on “The Play of Signs/The Signs of Play.”

Dr. Vincent Colapietro was honored at the meeting by receiving the Sebeok Fellow Award, the highest honor to be given by the Semiotic Society of America. The Sebeok Fellow Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of the doctrine of signs. Dr. Colapietro is Liberal Arts Research Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and currently affiliated to the University of Rhode Island through the Center for the Humanities. He has served as President of the Metaphysical Society of America, the Semiotic Society of America (SSA), and the Charles S. Peirce Society.

At the General Meeting of the Society on Sunday, October 7th, the head of the Program Committee and former Executive Director of the SSA, Farouk Seif was installed as the new President and Frank Macke became the new Vice-President of the Society for 2019. Executive Director Javier Clavere reported about current issues and plans for the 2019 conference.

Please see the Semiotic Society of America website for further information, news and updates, publications, semiotic resources, and announcements including the call for papers for the 2019 conference: https://semioticsocietyofamerica.org.

The Third Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS3-2018): Multimodalities. July 13-15, 2018. Ryerson University and OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Plenary speakers included the following: Eve Danziger, Professor and Chair of Anthropology at University of Virginia, United States; John Kennedy, University Professor of Psychology in the Department of Life Sciences, University of Toronto, Canada; Kalevi Kull, Professor of Biosemiotics and head of the Semiotics department at the University of Tartu, Estonia; Irene Mittelberg, Professor of Linguistics and cognitive semiotics at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, where she is also Director of the Natural Media Lab at the Human Technology Centre (HumTec) and Director of the Aachen Center for Sign Language and Gesture (SignGes); Maxine Sheets-Johnstone is Courtesy Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, United States; and Göran Sonesson, Professor of Semiotics at Lund University, Sweden, where he has directed the Semiotics Seminar since 1986, and has been the head of the Centre for cognitive semiotics since 2009. He also initiated Lund University’s doctorate in semiotics programme which formally started in 1998.

Some additional publications of note include:

- Applied Brand Semiotics. Thematic double issue of The American Journal of Semiotics 34 (3-4), 2018. Edited by Jamin Pelkey & Michael Pereira.

- John N. Deely (1942-2017) Memorial Issue. Thematic double issue of The American Journal of Semiotics 34 (1-2), 2018. Edited by Jamin Pelkey & Chris Morrissey. ii, 260 pp.

- Semiotics 2017: The Play of Musement (Yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America). Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation. Edited by Geoffrey Owens, Jamin Pelkey & Sari Park x, 180 pp.

Again, please see the Semiotic Society of America website for further information, news and updates, publications, semiotic resources, and announcements including the call for papers for the 2019 conference: https://semioticsocietyofamerica.org/​.