Sheetal Saini via Flickr
| This project investigated how meaning is produced by the body, particularly in the context of classical Indian dance. |
This project brings together faculty from the humanities, performing arts, and social sciences to investigate the relationships between meaning and motion, particularly in the context of classical Indian dance. Training in classical Indian dance is intensive and requires mastery of dozens of gestures and facial expressions with extraordinarily subtle distinctions that convey specific emotions to the audience. Aesthetic expectations are very important, and the gestures of dance form a poetics of posture and movement. The overarching question of our work is how meaning is produced by the body, and our goal is to develop a grammar of somatic expression by exploring the ways in which such a grammar would be similar to, or different from, the grammars of spoken and signed languages. Our work will involve two components. The first involves the form-meaning correspondences within the locus of the dancers themselves. The second component investigates the meanings as they are understood by the audiences within the communities in which these dance traditions are typically performed.
Mary K. Werkman Professor, Department of Linguistics; Co-Director, Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language
University of Chicago
Diane Brentari's broad interests address issues in sign language grammars, particularly problems at the intersection of morphology, phonology, and prosody. Her work has primarily focused on sign language phonology as a way to understand the effects of communication mode (or modality) on...
Frank J. McLoraine Professor of Linguistics; Director, Center for Hellenic Studies; Co-Director, Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language; Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Formation of Knowledge
University of Chicago
Anastasia Giannakidou studied Classical Philology and Linguistics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, and received her PhD in Linguistics from University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She is one of the founders and the director of the Hellenic Studies Center at the University...
University Professor with appointments in Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Committee on Social Thought
University of Chicago
Professor Saussy's primary teaching and research interests include classical Chinese poetry and commentary, literary theory, comparative study of oral traditions, problems of translation, pre-twentieth-century media history, and ethnography and ethics of medical care.
His 2022 book,...
Professor of Asian Studies
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. David Shulman's research interest are Indian poetics, live Sanskrit theater, the Renascence in South India in the 16-17 centuries and the Islam in south India and the Carnatic classic music.ilingual in Hebrew and English, he has mastered Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, and reads Greek,...
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Lecture by Pritty Patel-Grosz, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oslo
The Motion and Meaning project, sponsored by the Neubauer...
Lecture by Isabelle Charnavel
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Harvard University
This talk investigated the principles governing the perception of rhythmic...
Lecture by Tista Bagchi
Professor of Linguistics (retired), University of Delhi, India
This...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Lecture by Pritty Patel-Grosz, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oslo
Lecture by Isabelle Charnavel
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Harvard University
This talk investigated the principles governing the perception of rhythmic...
Lecture by Tista Bagchi
Professor of Linguistics (retired), University of Delhi, India
This...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
The Motion and Meaning project, sponsored by the Neubauer...
