Jamin Pelkey
Jamin’s research explores questions of language and meaning, using mixed-methods to discover how patterns of bodily experience relate to the evolution of human consciousness—from extreme ideologies to the creative imagination. An award-winning semiotician, he draws on insights from linguistics, poetics, anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy and biology to interpret evidence from symbolic systems around the world, intent on better understanding paradoxes and reversals related to the nature of wonder, resonance, and the meaning of life. He has published 18 books and edited collections, including The Semiotics of X (2017), Tropological Thought and Action (2022), and the four-volume major reference work, Bloomsbury Semiotics (2023).
I respect every way of life that respects every way of life.
Recent publications
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jamin-Pelkey (external link)
Sample of supervised ComCult projects:
2023 - Leanna Durdle; MA Thesis: Locating the Farang Teacher within and across West-Thai Encounter(s): From The King And I to Contemporary TEFL
2023 - Sophia Melanson Ricciardone: PhD Dissertation; Manufacturing dissent: A mixed methodological analysis of human thought, algorithmic mediation, and political electioneering on Twitter (Co-supervised with Stéphanie Walsh Matthews)
2022 - Esther Sampson; MA Thesis: From one place to an ‘other’: Meanings, ideologies, identities, and representations on the covers of Japanese self-help translations
2021 - Meng Jian; MA Project-Paper: Performance of language: A comparative linguistic study on news from China and Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic
2021 - Dayo Kefentse; MA Project-Paper: Generation X marks the spot on shifting Black Culture: What four GenX’ers did to activate and co-create a new kind of Caribbean-Canadian culture in Toronto
2021 - Richard Rosenbaum. PhD Dissertation: Consciousness is Story-Shaped: Mapping Isomorphic Structures of Narrative and Human Cognition
2020 - Aaisha Islam; MA Project-Paper: The lost generation of Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC): Stories of loss, longing, and belonging
2020 - Olivia Trono; MA Project-Paper: My Master’s thesis, but it’s a podcast (about podcasts)
2020 - Shon Shum. MA Major Research Paper: Cultured meat or frankenfood? A study of the normalizing and transforming discursive processes at work in the cultural politics of “meat”
2018 - Tanya Bailey; MA Thesis: Racing after the hurricane: Changing perceptions and design of the early automobile
2015 - Mathew Iantorno; MA Major Research Paper: Robo Ludens: Conceptualizing robots as playmates and playthings
ComCult Teaching Activities
- CC 8902 Research Methods Workshop
- CC 8906 Communication and Culture: An Interdisciplinary Approach
- CC 8922 Issues in Cultural Studies: Symbol, Myth, and Meaning - Cognitive Recoveries
- CC 8990 Multimodal Analysis (Directed Study)
- CC 9990 Readings in Cognitive Linguistics (Directed Study)
- CC 9990 Linguistics and Poetics (Directed Study)
- CC 9990 Biosemiotic Aesthetics (Directed Study)
- CMCT 7011 Semiotics of Cultural Cognition (Directed Study)