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• Non-Aristotelian Perspectives, Ecological Approaches, and the Anthropocene II Symposium

  • When
    27 Apr 2024
  •  
    8:45 AM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Online Via Zoom

  Register

  Join us on Saturday, April 27th for Non-Aristotelian Perspectives, Ecological Approaches, and the Anthropocene II: An Online Symposium. As the title indicates, this is a continuation of the Non-Aristotelian Perspectives, Ecological Approaches, and the Anthropocene Symposium held in person following the 2023 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in New York City. 

  
  

  Our online symposium is free and open to members and non-members alike, but registration is required. The symposium will be held via Zoom, with the information for signing on to be distributed in advance of the event. Please note that sessions will be recorded for later distribution online. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Non-Aristotelian Perspectives,

  Ecological Approaches,

  and the Anthropocene II

  An Online Symposium

  April 27th, 2024

  
  

  All times listed are Eastern Daylight Savings Time

  
  

  Greetings and Welcomings       8:45 AM EDT

  Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

  
  

  Session I   The Map is Not the Territory   9:00 AM to 10:15 AM

  Chair: Eva Berger, College of Management Academic Studies, Israel

  
  

  “Robothespian as Invocational Actant”

      Chris Chesher, University of Sydney, Australia

  
  

  “Pragmatic Analysis of Deixis in Indian Stand-up Comedy”

      Tanima Bagchi, Shiv Nadar University Chennai, India

  
  

  “Understanding the Experience of Secularism Through a General Semantics Perspective”

  
  

      Asmita Kundu, Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics & Other Human Sciences, India

  
  

  “It Touches Us: A Comprehensive Model for Explaining Preferences for Using Paper Media as an Alternative to Equivalent Digital Products”

      David Levin, College of Management & Academic Studies, Israel

  
  

  Session II   Binding Time and Space   10:30 AM to 11:45 AM

  Chair: Laura Trujillo Liñán, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

  
  

  “AI Art and Prompts: Lost in Translation”

      Eva Berger, College of Management & Academic Studies, Israel

  
  

  “Time-Binding and Literacy in the Era of AI Growth”

      Kasia Drogowska, Independent Scholar, Poland

  
  

  “Not Merely a Continent: The Concept of Europe in the Ukrainian Language of the 16th to 18th Centuries”

      Oleksandr Bohomolets-Barash, Taras Shevchenko National University, Ukraine

  
  

  “The Law of Onto-Existential Unity: Ontophenomenology Reworks the Early Korzybski”

      Mauro Ventola, Center for Ontological Transformation, Italy

  
  

  Session III   People in Quandaries   12:o0 Noon to 1:15 PM

  Chair: Susan J. Drucker, Hofstra University, USA

  
  

  “A Media Ecological Glance at Resilience in the 21st Century Multimodal Artistic Environment” 

      Olena Marina, Kerry Education and Training Board, Ireland, 

  & Igor Korolyov, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine

  
  

  “What is Documentation and How Do You Study It?”

      Niels Windfeld Lund, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway

  
  

  “Depressing and Anxiogenic Environments: Digital Media and Its Discontents”

      Adriana Braga, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  
  

  “Kenneth Burke, Alfred Korzybski, and Ontology: Charting a Path for Understanding the Anthropocene”

      Ryan McCullough, West Liberty University, USA

  
  

  Session IV    Semantic Reactions    1:30 to 2:45 PM

  Chair: Dom Heffer, Institute of General Semantics, UK

  
  

  “Mapping the Territory: Active Listening and Active Feedback Processes in Meaning-Making”

      Svetlana V. Grushina, Dartmouth College, USA

  
  

  “Visualizing Complexity: Unifying Symbols Through Language Designed for Systems Theory”

      R. Aaron Ball, Independent Scholar, Canada

  
  

  “Reflections, Intentions, and Spirit Interventions: A Poetic Path in Public Health”

      Donna Flayhan, State University of New York at New Paltz, USA

  
  

  “Human Rights and Technology: An Approach to Analyzing the Impact of Media on Society”

      Laura Trujillo Liñán, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico and 

      Ricardo Meneses-Trujillo, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

  
  

  Session V     The Art of Awareness     3:o0 to 4:15 PM

  Chair: Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College, USA

  
  

  “Korzybski's Razor”

      Chris Mayer, Institute of General Semantics, USA

  
  

  “Expanding Our Horizons: Language as Metaphor”

      Milton Dawes, Independent Scholar, Canada

  
  

  “Anatomical Semantics and Embodied Cognition: The Simple Case of the Shoulder and the Slouch”

      Jim Freda, Independent Scholar, USA

  
  

  “The Generation Gap: An Obstacle or An Opportunity?”

      Elsa Sánchez, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

  
  

  Session VI   Semantic Environments   4:30 Noon to 5:45 PM

  Chair: Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

  
  

  “Doubling Down on Rationality: Teaching Langer in the Context of Extinction”

      Heather Crandall, Gonzaga University, USA

  
  

  “McLuhan Thinking with Kepes: Technology and Environments, Art and Awareness”

      Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, University of Winnipeg, Canada

  
  

  “Harold Innis’s Final Course and the Capacity of Language”

      Edward Comor, University of Western Ontario, Canada

  
  

  “Easterbrook: The Fifth Business in the Innis and McLuhan Narrative”

      Tom Cooper, Emerson College, USA

  
  

  Concluding Remarks       6:00 PM

      Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

  
  

  About the Participants

  
  

  Tanima Bagchi will soon be joining as Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Shiv Nadar University Chennai. Prior to this engagement, she has worked as an Academic Fellow at Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences Baroda and as Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Management Indore and Vellore Institute of Technology Andhra Pradesh (VIT-AP University). She has obtained her PhD in Linguistics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. She has an MA in Linguistics from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and a BA (Honours) in English from Scottish Church College, affiliated to University of Calcutta. She works at the intersection of language, culture, and cognition and explores the intricate relationship between gender and language use at both public and private spaces. She is a qualitative researcher and applies interdisciplinarity in her research methodology. Her research specializations lie in the areas of sociolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. She has been working in the domains of gender, power and communication; honorification; language and spatial cognition; language and perception; humor studies; film studies; narrative analysis; development of language corpus. When she is not involved in academic activities, she spends her time by reading both fiction and non-fiction books of which her favorite genres include magical realism, historical fiction, memoir and biography. She also dabbles in poetry and short stories and has a knack for learning foreign languages.

  
  

  Eva Berger is a Professor of Media Studies at the College of Management Academic Studies in Israel. She serves as Secretary of the Institute of General Semantics. Dr. Berger is the author of, Context Blindness: Digital Technology and the Next Stage of Human Evolution (2022, Peter Lang), and co-author of The Communication Panacea: Pediatrics and General Semantics (2014, IGS). She holds a Ph.D. in Media Ecology from New York University. 

  
  

  Oleksandr Bohomolets-Barash is a Ph.D. student at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in Ukraine, Institute of Philology, Department of Ukrainian Language and Applied Linguistics. Currently, he is working on his dissertation concerning the concept of Europe in the linguistic picture of the world of Ukrainians of the XVI–XVIII centuries. Although he writes about Europe as a part of Western civilization, he admires Eastern culture, which contributes to his professional life as a book editor (he worked on Ukrainian translations of several fictional books, including the first translation of Kuwaiti short stories into Ukrainian “In Search of Precious Pearls” (Kuwait City, 2023), and the novels by Crimean Tatar writers, such as Ismail Gasprinsky and Cengiz Dağcı). Accepting the hypothesis that different languages provide different worldviews, he enjoys learning languages, such as English, Spanish, and Polish.

  
  

  Adriana Braga is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Past President of the Media Ecology Association, and Visiting Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. She is a Researcher funded by FAPERJ and CNPq,  and a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She was a Visiting Professor at the University of Macau, China. She coordinates the Digital Media Laboratory-LabMiD and the Digital Interactions Research Group-GRID. She is the author and editor of 12 books and over 100 articles and book chapters includingAI and the Singularity: A Fallacy or a Great Opportunity? (MDPI, Switzerland, 2020); Introduction to Media Ecology (w/Strate and Levinson. Loyola, 2019); Maternal-Electronic Personae (Sulina, 2008); Summer-Body: Journalism and Discourse in the Women's Press (PUC-Rio Press, 2016); and CMC, Identities and Gender (UBI/Portugal, 2005). Her doctoral dissertation was the winner of the CAPES PhD Dissertation Award 2007 and the Media Ecology Association’s Harold Innis Award 2007. She was the recipient of the Media Ecology Association’sLouis Forsdale Award for Outstanding Educator in the Field of Media Ecology in 2022. She is the producer and director of the feature-length documentary Howie The Outsiders: the Chicago School and Communication Studies in Brazil (Brazil/France/USA/Portugal, 2020, 62min), which was awarded at the Congress of ANPOCS 2022.

  
  

  Chris Chesher is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Discipline of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, culture, and society, with current interests in the transformation of restaurant service with robots, the cultural and semiotic aspects of social robots and the place of AI image generators in the history of visual culture. In earlier work Dr. Chesher has explored the implications of technology-mediated interactions in virtual reality, blogging, smartphone cameras, voice assistants and computer games. His work sheds light on how these interactions reshape social dynamics, behaviors, and human identities. His research is characterized by its application of theoretical concepts to real-world contexts. Dr. Chesher's recent book, Invocational Media: Reconceptualising the Computer, is both a critique of the dominant computational paradigm and a reimagining of digital technologies through the concept of invocation.

  
  

  Edward Comor is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and has spent over thirty years teaching, researching and writing about the political economy of culture and communication, international communications, and the work of Harold Innis. For his sixth book, he has edited Easterbrook’s 1952-1953 lectures for when he taught Harold Innis's course on communications under the title, Harold Innis’s Final Course. It will be published by Peter Lang as part of Lance Strate’s Understanding Media Ecology series.

  
  

  Tom Cooper was a guest scholar at Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Cambridge, Princeton, the East-West Center, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Hawaii during his last two sabbaticals, and was professor at Emerson College for thirty-eight years. The Association for Responsible Communication which he founded was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cooper taught at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude, and was an ‘ethics expert’ at a United Nations project in Vienna and Athens. A former assistant to Marshall McLuhan, he was a consultant to the Elders Project which involved Nelson Mandela, Kofi Anan and Jimmy Carter. Cooper is a playwright with a Ph.D. in theater and media, a union musician who trained at the Royal Conservatory, a poet, black belt, blogger, and author or co-author of nine books and over two hundred academic and professional articles and reviews. Dr. Cooper’s latest book, Doing the Right Thing, is about twelve of the most difficult and influential ethical decisions ever made and his next book, Wisdom Weavers, is about the intellectual relationship between Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. His current musical, Higher! Higher!, is in development at theaters in Cambridge, MA, and in Honolulu where he currently resides.

  
  

  Heather Crandall earned an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Media Studies, and American Studies. She is a Professor in Communication Studies at Gonzaga University where she teaches Analyzing Public Texts and Discourse, Rhetoric of Social Change and Understanding Meaning-Making. She is interested in using scholarly expertise to advance the global fight for environmental justice. She co-authored The Climate Girl Effect: Fridays, Flint, and Fire (2022), which received the 2023 Honorable Mention Book Award from Labor Tech Research Network. She published an article on hashtag activism in the journal, Explorations in Media Ecology. She is the book review editor of Communication Research Trends and sits on two boards:Gonzaga’s Advisory Boards for the Institute of Climate, Water, and the Environment and the Northwest Alliance for Media Literacy. 

  
  

  Milton Dawes is a Fellow of The Institute of General Semantics, and a scholar of Alfred Korzybski's  General Semantics. He is the author of numerous articles, including "The Calculus as The Logic of Sanity,"”Bernard Lonergan S. J.'s, Transcendental Insights,” and "The Detached, Unrestricted, Disinterested, Desire to Know." He was presented the J. Talbot Winchell Award  for "Outstanding Contributions to General Semantics" and also the Irving J. Lee Award  for "Excellence in Teaching General  Semantics." His seminar approach focuses on learning from ourselves, others, and from whatever happens to be going on in the moment. 

  
  

  Kasia Drogowska has completed the first Polish translation of Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity, selected excerpts of which will be published in 2024. She is currently starting a collaboration with the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, where she plans to teach the application of general semantics in human-machine interactions, as well as head a postsgraduate course combining the humanities and sciences to impart knowledge about the impact of technology on humans and ecosystems.  She is a graduate of the Faculty of Journalism and Political Science at the University of Warsaw, where she earned her PhD, studying the impact of new media on news production, management and use. She works for Warner Bros Discovery as head of local ad-supported OTT product and editorial director.

  
  

  Susan J. Drucker is a Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism/Media Studies, School of Communication, Hofstra University, and a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics. She is an attorney, and treasurer of the Urban Communication Foundation. She is the author and editor of 13 books and over 150 articles and book chapters including two volumes of the Urban Communication Reader, Regulating Convergence (Peter Lang, 2010), Voices in theStreet: Gender, Media and Public Space and two editions of Real Law @ Virtual Space: The Regulation of Cyberspace (1999, 2005), and Regulating Social Media: Legal and Ethical Considerations (2013) with Gary Gumpert. She co-edited Urban Communication Regulations: Communication Freedoms and Limits (Lang, 2018). Her latest book is Fake News: Real Issues in Modern Communication with Russell Chun (Peter Lang, 2020). She received the Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship from the Media Ecology Association in 2018. Her work examines the relationship between media technology and human factors, particularly as viewed from a legal perspective.

  
  

  Jim Freda is a scholar/practitioner, a structural bodyworker and a somatic social theorist. In his clinical work he focuses on reversing the effects on our postural structure and muscle tone of sedentarism and environmental mismatch. As a scholar he is  interested in how history and culture shape and determine anatomy, both our academic understanding of anatomy and our practical awareness of the body or lack of it, including how the field of anatomy is increasingly making decisive contributions to complexity theory. His own interest is in an important myofascial synergy called the deep core, which is the focus in his therapeutic work and research.

  
  

  Donna Flayhan is a Professor of Strategic Communication, Environmental Health & Justice, and Media Ecology at the State University of New York at New Paltz where she is currently developing curriculum for a new Masters in Strategic Communication program.  In 2024-25, Dr Flayhan will be developing the foundational graduate course in Strategic Communication as well as the advanced graduate course in Environmental Communication, Organizations, and Sustainability.  Flayhan has also taught and in 2024-25, will be further developing the undergraduate course in Environmental Communication offered by the Department of Communication on the major plan for the new undergraduate major in Environmental Studies at the State University at New Paltz.  Flayhan works in what she calls “quintessentially American Pragmatism combined with philosophical spiritualism” resulting in fulfilling and important work as a public intellectual.

  
  

  Thom Gencarelli is Professor and founding Chair of the Communication Department at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, where he also serves as Advisor to the College’s student-run newspaper, The Quadrangle. He is a Past President of the Media Ecology Association, the New York State Communication Association, and the New Jersey Communication Association (twice), Treasurer and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics, and Editor of the IGS’ official journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He researches and writes about media ecology, media education/media literacy, new media, and popular media and culture with an emphasis on popular music, is co-editor (with Brian Cogan) of Baby Boomers and Popular Culture: An Inquiry into America’s Most Powerful Generation, and has two books due out this year: Searching for the Right Notes: Essays on Media, Music, and Meaning (Peter Lang) and, with Corey Anton, the anthology General Semantics and Politics (the New Non-Aristotelian Library). He is the recipient of multiple awards including the Eastern Communication Association’s Distinguished Teaching Fellows Award and the Media Ecology Association’s Louis Forsdale Award for Outstanding Educator in the Field of Media Ecology, the John F. Wilson Fellowship Award for Scholarship and Service from the New York State Communication Association, the Media Ecology Association’s Christine L. Nystrom Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Service to the Field of Media Ecology, and, just last year, the J. Talbott Winchell Award for Outstanding Contributions and Service to the Cause of General Semantics from the Institute of General Semantics. He is also a songwriter, musician, and producer, and has released four album-length works with his ensemble bluerace: World is Ready (2009), Beautiful Sky (2013), Mistral (2019), and due out this summer, INDYeGO.

  
  

  Svetlana (Yana) Grushina is Senior Lecturer in Speech at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, where she teaches Public Speaking; New Media Communication; and Organizational Communication and Sustainability. Yana's research focuses on language and social interaction; her fieldwork sites have spanned Australia, Bermuda, Brazil, Germany, Jamaica, and the U.S. Her research in the contexts of sustainability and multinational teamwork has been published in Organization & Environment, Organizational Dynamics, Communication Yearbook, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, and other outlets. She was the Campus Compact for New Hampshire (CCNH) 2021 Presidents’ Good Steward Award recipient for her work engaging students with community organizations via Social Impact Practicum projects in her courses. Yana's passions include teaching, thinking about and providing feedback on student work, abandoning cross-stitch projects, and watching the sunrise when sailing offshore.

  
  

  Dom Heffer is a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, and an artist based in Hull, East Yorkshire. He is known for making large scale paintings exploring technological and communications environments, often with an anarchic flavor. He has worked with numerous arts and research organizations nationally and internationally, such as The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2021 Visual Arts Centre, Ferens Art Gallery and is a founding member of Feral Art School. For further info see: ideasinthevoid.com.

  
  

  Igor Korolyov is Doctor of Sciences in Philology, and Professor of the Department of Polish Studies and Head of the Centre for Baltic Studies at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in Ukraine. He is the manager of the Project “Ecolinguistic Modes of Ukrainian Discursive Space in the European Multicultural Continuum” (2020-2021) in the framework of the “Supporting the leading researchers and young scientists” competition under the National Research Foundation of Ukraine. His research interests include  general linguistics, language philosophy, linguistic communication, ecolinguistics, and psycholinguistics.

  
  

  Asmita Kundu has recently completed her Doctor of Philosophy from the Center of English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her dissertation is entitled The Evolution and Ambiguities of Secularism in India: A Study of Select Novels (Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century). Presently, she is an independent scholar and an English Literature and Language Educator, and Academic Fellow at Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences Baroda.

  
  

  David Levin is a senior lecturer in The School of Media Studies, College of Management Academic Studies, Israel. He focuses on the conjunctions between the possibilities and limitations of various media, cultural models, and the implications of special contexts of use. His recent book, It Touches Us,  deals with the continuous using of paper base media in the digital age.

  
  

  Niels Windfeld Lund, born 1949 in Copenhagen, Denmark, historian, and ethnologist, became the first employee and full professor in Documentation Studies, University of Tromsø, Norway, in 1996 and was responsible for the initial development of Documentation Studies. From 1975 till 1988 Dr. Lund was Associate Professor at the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Denmark. Professor Lund has been Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, (2001/2005-06) and is the founder of The Document Academy, an international network for Documentation Studies organizing annual DOCAM conferences. In 2014, Prof. Lund retired, but is still active as Professor Emeritus.

  
  

  Olena Marina is a Doctor of Science in Philology and Professor at the Kerry Education and Training Board, Ireland. Her research interests include multimodal studies, cognitive linguistics, transmediality studies, media ecology, and general semantics.

  
  

  Christopher W. Mayer is Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, an independent scholar, and founder of Woodlock House Family Capital, a private investment partnership. He is also the author of How Do You Know? which received the S.I. Hayakawa Book Award from the Institute of General Semantics in 2019. And he is the author of Dear Fellow Timebinder: Letters on General Semantics, published by the Institute in 2022. 

  
  

  Ryan McCullough is an Associate Professor of Communication in the Department of Media and Visual Arts at West Liberty University (West Liberty, West Virginia). He teaches courses in public speaking, media theory, media law and ethics, public relations, and social media. His research interests include media ecology, rhetoric, communication ethics, and general semantics. 

  
  

  Jaqueline McLeod Rogers is a Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba (Canada). She teaches courses about place, professional writing and style, non-fiction writing, and academic/scholarly writing.  She has a manuscript awaiting publication, Marshall McLuhan with Urban Planner Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Artist Gyorgy Kepes: Crises Then as Now (with Peter Lang) and recently published McLuhan’s Techno-Sensorium City: Coming to our Senses in a Programmed Environment (Lexington 2021)—a book recognized by the Media Ecology Association  with The Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Ecology of Technics (2021). Her article “Susanne Langer, Marshall McLuhan and Media Ecology: Feminist Principles in Humanist Projects” received The Walter Benjamin Award for Outstanding Article from the MEA in 2022 and, in further feminist studies, she co-edited Parenting/Internet/Kids: Domesticating Technologies (Demeter Press 2022). She is currently serving a term on the MEA Board and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Senses and Society.

  
  

  Ricardo Meneses-Trujillo is an industrial engineer with specializations in Project Management and in Corporate Finance from Universidad Panamericana. His academic endeavors include a full-time MBA from IPADE Business School, an exchange program of 4 months at the University of Technology in Tallinn, Estonia, and a diploma in Data Science from Columbia University in New York. Ricardo has worked as a consultant at KPMG, helping international companies like Aeroméxico, BMW, Volkswagen, Bayer, and Boehringer Ingelheim. He has also worked as a general director for Grupo Andrade. Currently, he is the founder and CEO of Digital Thunder, a marketing digital agency, and also shares his expertise as a professor of Big Data and Marketing at Universidad Panamericana. Ricardo is not only a strategist and educator but also a musician who plays violin, piano, and cello, he has been certified by the Royal School of Music. Fluent in French, English, Spanish, he nurtures his artistic side through painting and is further expanding his intellectual pursuits with a degree in philosophy.
  

  
  

  Elsa Sánchez has maintained an academic and professional career in diverse fields such as political science, philosophy and education. She has experience as a professor at all academic levels and as a committed speaker on issues related to women, education and culture. Additionally, her dedication as a mother and her participation in volunteerism demonstrate her commitment to the community and her ability to balance family responsibilities with her passion for learning and service. Elsa appears to have an active and diverse personality, enjoying both intellectual pursuits and sports such as swimming and boxing, reflecting her ability to balance mind and body in her pursuit of knowledge and well-being.

  
  

  Lance Strate is a Trustee and President of the Institute of General Semantics, a Past President of the New York Society for General Semantics, the New York State Communication, Association and the Media Ecology Association, and Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs of the Global Listening Centre. He is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, held the 2015 Harron Family Chair in Communication at Villanova University, and received an honorary appointment as Chair Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Henan University in Kaifeng, China, in 2016. He is the author of Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study (2006), On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology (2011), Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited (2014), Thunder at Darwin Station (2015), 麦克卢汉与媒介生态学 [McLuhan and Media Ecology, an original collection of essays published in Mandarin translation, 2016], Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017), Introdução à Ecologia das Midías [Introduction to Media Ecology, co-authored by Adriana Braga and Paul Levinson, original contributions published in Portuguese translation, 2019), Diatribal Writes of Passage in a World of Wintertextuality: Poems on Language, Media, and Life (2020), Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions in the Human Life World (2022, IGS), First Letter of My Alphabet (2023, NeoPoiesis), and Not A, Not Be, &c (in press, IGS). He is co-editor of two editions of Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment (1996, 2003), Critical Studies in Media Commercialism (2000), The Legacy of McLuhan (2005), Korzybski and... (2012), The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan (2015), La Comprensión de los Medios en la Era Digital: Un Nuevo Análisis de la Obra de Marshall McLuhan (2016), and Taking Up McLuhan's Cause: Perspectives on Media and Formal Causality (2017). He has served as editor of the Speech Communication Annual, General Semantics Bulletin, and Explorations in Media Ecology, a journal he founded and edited for 9 years (2002-2007, 2017-2019). He delivered the 2018 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture for the Institute of General Semantics and received their 2022 J. Talbot Winchell Award for Service, received the Media Ecology Association's 2018 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and their 2013 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship, the Eastern Communication Association's 2019 Distinguished Research Fellow Award, the New York State Communication Association's 2019 Neil Postman Mentor Award and their 1998 John F. Wilson Fellow Award for exceptional scholarship, leadership, and dedication to the field of communication, the Global Listening Centre’s 2020 Outstanding Research Award.

  
  

  Laura Trujillo-Liñán is professor/researcher of Humanities and Media at Universidad Panamericana, General Coordinator for the Universidad Panamericana Open University, member of the Board of Trustees of the General Semantics Institute, Vice-President Elect of the Media Ecology Association, and member of the Asociación Filosófica de México, and the International Communication Association. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters, on topics related to Marshall McLuhan, Aristotle, metaphysics, ethics and media. She is the author of Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s Thinking: An Aristotelian Perspective (2022, IGS).

  
  

  Mauro Ventola is the Founder and President of the “Center for Ontological Transformation”, an institution that intends to promote the critical refoundation of transformationality in existential ontology, and creator of transformational ontophenomenology. Previously he was Director of the Center for Psychosynthesis in Naples from 2017 to 2020, and member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Psychosynthesis founded by Roberto Assagioli. He graduated in Philosophy at the University of Naples Federico II with a thesis in Bioeducational Sciences, furthering his education at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies (IISF). He has devoted his entire research to the realm of transformation from an ontological-existential point of view, publishing about twenty books, including: L’Esperienza Transpersonale [The Transpersonal Experience] (with Sergio Guarino, Integral Transpersonal Institute, 2021), L’Orizzonte di un Mondo Nuovo [The Horizon of a New World] (with Alberto Alberti, L.;UOMO, 2020), and Al Cuore della Questione [At the Heart of the Matter] (with Marco Guzzi, Nuova Era, 2020), Il Coraggio di Volere [The Courage to Want] (Institute of Psychosynthesis, 2019). He is the author of numerous articles in specialized journals, including the Journal of the Italian Society of Therapeutic Psychosynthesis (SIPT), the Journal of the Italian Institute for the Future (IIF) and in the Integral Transpersonal Journal (ITJ). He has lectured in various contexts, including the Integral Transpersonal Institute (ITI), the International Institute of Educational Psychosynthesis (IIPE), the European Transpersonal Association (EUROTAS) and the University of Florence.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Show details
• Film Screening: Man on a Mission

  • When
    1 May 2024
  •  
    6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Location
    The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, New York, NY 10003

  Register

  The Institute of General Semantics

  and

  The New York Society for General Semantics

  Are Proud to Present a Screening of

  Man on a Mission

  A Film By

  Dina Bruno Ciborowski

  and

  Robert Albrecht

  
  

  Man on a Mission (2023) tells the remarkable story of Carmine Tabone whose lifelong mission was to explore the innovative uses of the arts and play in the education and socialization of children. As we entered more deeply into the electronic revolution, Tabone uncovered multiple ways in which the arts and play could be used as media to motivate the development of oral communication, literacy, and social interaction. The video focuses primarily on Tabone’s work as founder and director of a day camp in Jersey City where he and his staff of artists and educators created an oral environment as a means of counter-balancing the power and prestige of electronic media.
  
  Tabone’s approach to education—part theory, part praxis—can be appreciated as a practical application of ideas postulated by both Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman who understood the critical need for counter-environments in the electronic age.

  Engaging, hopeful, and joyous… What a force. All so impressive. The unmitigated joy, happiness, and outstanding creative expression on the faces of the children not to mention the spillover into their lives was a revelation. I found myself singing, swinging my arms, and dancing to the infectiousness of it all.

       —Teri McLuhan, author and filmmaker

  The film is the epitome of Postman's call for loving resistance fighters.

       —Lance Strate, IGS President & Professor of Communication & Media Studies, Fordham University

  I can honestly say that I use Educational Arts strategies every day. It helps my children become deeper thinkers, it helps them identify with characters and situations in stories, it increases their comprehension. The writing pieces that follow, the judgement pieces we can do, all enhance our curriculum’s focus.

       —Danielle Chiaro (Jersey City Middle School Teacher)

  A Q&A session featuring Robert Albrecht and Carmine Tabone will follow the screening.

  About the Directors:

  Robert Albrecht is the current President of the Media Ecology Association and served briefly at Arts Editor of ETC. Albrecht began his work with Carmine Tabone and the Educational Arts Team/Camp Liberty at the same time he began his doctoral work in Media Ecology at New York University with Neil Postman. “Neil’s ideas obviously influenced my work with children and the arts just as my work with Carmine influenced all my subsequent media ecology scholarship.” For 40 years, Albrecht worked as a musician and workshop leader in Jersey City schools and at the Camp. He is also the author of numerous children’s plays that were produced on stage at Camp Liberty. Along with Mr. Tabone, Albrecht is the author of The Arts and Play as Educational Media in the Digital Age (2020), winner of the Media Ecology Association’s prestigious Susanne Langer Award.

  Dina Bruno Ciborowski began her professional life doing improvisation theater in New York City but came to the realization that her background with improv, acting games and role play could be used more profitably to work magic in the primary school classroom. Suddenly students who were bored and detached from schooling were engaged and active participants in the learning experience. Over the past two decades, her creative work with children in Jersey City has included supervising a teen arts program, the co-creation of a number of plays, skits and puppet shows, and continued work with the art and drama techniques that act as powerful tools cultivating literacy, teaching life lessons and supporting social and emotional learning. Dina died in October of 2023 shortly after completing this film. She is missed by everyone who knew her smile, laughter, dedication and insight.

  Registration is free. All attendees must be registered in order to gain admittance to the club. This includes any guests you might want to bring with you.

  The program will take place in the Dining Hall on the 1st floor of the club. Please note that, as an historic 19th century landmark, the site is not handicap accessible. Dress code is business casual and is strictly enforced, including no sneakers, shorts, ripped jeans, t-shirts).

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