The course aims to introduce students to basic concepts of semiotics and culture. More specifically, consideration is given to:

• The model of language, the notion of text in semiotics
• The typology of the sign (icon, index, symbol) and the concept of infinite semiosis (C.-S. Peirce)
• The notions of denotation and connotation, the mythologies, the notion of synergy of semiotic systems (R. Barthes)
• The concept of code (U. Eco, R. Barthes)
• The concept of Semantic Isotopies, the Semiotic Square and Binary Oposition (A.J. Greimas)
• The concepts of intertextuality and intersemiosis (J. Kristeva, R. Jakobson, S. Petrilli, P. Torop)
• Contribution by E. Cassirer and "Cultural Semiotics"
• The Semiosphere and Modeling Systems (J. Lotman)
• Culture as a structure: Myth, Mythologies (C. Levi-Strauss), Low and High Culture (E. Hall)
• The transition from Culture as Text (Humanities) to Culture as Action/Performance (Geertz)
• The role of the reader (S. Hall, U. Eco)
  

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/el/class/1/600180761/M1 

The master dissertation is written in the Greek language but it could also be written in a foreign language, if permission is granted by the Special Interdepartmental Committee (EDE). The length of the dissertation is approximately 16,000 words, excluding appendices, notes, bibliography, tables, etc, in a Times New Roman font, size 12 pt and line spacing 1.5.

The dissertation is submitted to the three members of the evaluation committee and to the Secretariat in print or digital format.

The evaluation of the dissertation is completed within a three months period of time upon its submission.

The supervisor and two members evaluate individually the dissertation and all grades are notified to the Secretariat. The final grade of the dissertation is the numerical average of the three different evaluations.

The course  will be articulated in three parts: The first part (sessions 1-3) will examine historical and methodological issues of both semiotics and art history, relying mainly on the traditions of Aby Warburg and Μeyer Shapiro on the one hand,  Ferdinand de Saussure and Algirdas-Julien Greimas on the other. The second part (sessions 4-8) will present  the uses of semiotic tools by art historians and “image scientists” (Rosalind Krauss, Stephen Bann, Mieke Bal, Klaus Sachs-Hombach et al.), while the third  part will tackle the larger scale of cultural semiotics, as well as the history of media and the “semiosphere” in the era of mass communication.

Taught by: Lia Yoka, Panagiotis Mpikas

Detailed course presentation: 
https://qa.auth.gr/el/class/1/600123662  

The current course explores the visualisation of verbal language in the context of Graphic and Visual Communication. By identifying theories of visual and applied Semiotics it examines how meaning is constructed between the image, text/typography and sound for the communication of messages, in different mediums and applications. Additionally, the course demonstrates to students the capacity of Graphic and Visual Communication to reflect culture, as well as outlines the importance of semiotic analysis and critical thinking through specific applications and assignments from relevant fields.

Distance learning Course

Taught by: to be announced

The course is about semiotic analyses of text of general content where the core message is one or more non-verbal semiotic elements coupled with verbal elements. The texts to be analyzed have been published in various modes, such as print, audio-visual, digital and web-based and they are analyzed through the lens of multimodal semiotics. Multimodal semiotics is theoretically based on social semiotics and approaches the phenomenon of multimodal communication through a systemic functional perspective. In systemic functional linguistics communication is always context-based and embedded in social practice. On the other hand, in systemic functional semiotics it is possible to examine meaning that is created through the combined use of several semiotic resources. By employing a multimodal grammar consisted of five semiotic dimensions (representational, social, organizational, contextual and ideological) it is carried out an empirical examination of multimodal and multisemiotic texts (advertising campaigns, illustrated stories, musical book covers, subtitling and visual poetry).

Taught by: G. Damaskinidis

The aim of the course is to (a) familiarize students with semiotic and the theoretical tools for text and image analysis and (b) introduce students to the study of the meaning of symbolic systems through analyzes of significance systems derived from educational textbooks, educational legislation and from the wider social field of education, video of international organizations, focusing on these texts as institutions of culture and values.

Upon completion of the course, students are expected at the end of the semester:

1. Understand and manage text and image semiotic tool analysis
2. Analyze texts relating to the field of education as school textbooks, educational legislation, and international organizations relevant to education
3. Develop research capabilities and critical thinking as well as apply knowledge in practice, analyze and synthesize data using the necessary technologies.

Student evaluation involves final research work and oral presentation, analyzing how the educational texts are encoded - in virtual and non- text messages to convey meaning.

Taught by: To be announced

The objective of this course is to enable students to understand the language of audiovisual texts and to familiarise them with key theoretical aspects and texts on audiovisual semiotics and adaptation. Students will be trained to understand cinematic language, audiovisual narrative and the main concepts of adaptation across different semiotic systems/modes and cultures. The course will comprise of both theoretical and laboratory work on various audiovisual genres ranging from feature to animation films. Assessment will be based on a midterm and a final project.

Taught by: Loukia Kostopoulou

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600180762 

Narratives exist in many different media: written texts, oral storytelling, theatrical performance, film and television, as well as painting, music and dance. They may be presented as fictional or as non-fiction. Stories are also often borrowed back and forth between different semiotic systems, adapted to media-specific conventions and techniques and interpreted to adjust to new cultural and social circumstances. However, the basic elements of the narrative form, such as plot, character, setting and point of view, can be identified in all narratives independently of their medium of expression. In this course, we shall use the narrative theory of A. J. Greimas to analyze narratives of different kinds, concentrating on written texts but also looking at myth, folktale, cinema, television, and the many other areas where we encounter narratives in contemporary culture. As part of the requirements for the course, students will be expected to produce an original narrative analysis of a story in a medium of their choice, selecting the text in consultation with the instructor.

Distance Learning Course

Taught by: Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou, Alexandros-Phaidon Lagopoulos

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600123686 

Semiotic of migration literature is a new field of research, which combines the Semiotic of Literature with the Semiotic of Culture. In our lessons we will explore on the basis of Greek and translated literary texts both the semiotics of linguistic metaphors of the dynamic concept of Culture, Interculturalism and Hybridism as well as the semiotics of communicational mediation through literature. The lessons are divided into two parts: a) An introductory part, in which we will familiarize with the theories of Semiotic Literature and Culture, such as Semiotics of Metaphors, Semiotic Cognitive Theory, Semiotics of Culture and b) Applied part where the above theories will be applied in various European immigration texts, as well as selected films.Learning results. At the end of the course the students should be able to:• analyze autonomously the semiotics, intercultural and communication potential of migrant literary texts and films and• develop empathic skills to interpret multifaceted foreign cultural codes.

Taught by: Aglaia Blioumi

We present basic theoretical concepts of literary texts analysis and their indicative didactic approaches, applying to the theory of Goldmann, Bakhtin, Jauss, Iser, Durand, Barthes, Bourdieu, Freud, Eliade and the proposed synthesis of semiotic tools. In terms of learning outcomes, students will become familiar with the following analysis / implementation topics:

• intertextual notions of the myth, the social dialogue of the literary myth and its hypertextual dimensions,• the concept of multimodality and its applications, the role of ICT and the Internet in education,
• the epistemological field of social constructivism and group collaboration of pupils,
• the proposed fictional theory of hybrid signs as a means of multimodal correlation between experience and metaphor, and
• the proposed educational software (MFE) in the teaching of literature.

Taught by: Symeon Degermetzidis

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600141505 

Taught by: Lia Yoka, Titika Dimitroulia 

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600180765/M1 

Nowadays, new forms of narrative have emerged, where the user actively influences the story development and often affects their course.  With the support of technology, these narratives have been applied to almost all kinds of cultural production: from literature and art to advertisements, video games and, very recently, television. In this course, we focus primarily on the semiotic and narrative analysis of interactive novels, animations and video games, in order to address narratives in as many semiotic systems as possible (natural language, visual, sound, filmic etc.) while at the same time we will look at various other applications such as in advertising, in educational applications, in art, in videos for social purposes and more.

Taught by:  Maria Katsaridou

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600158696 

The course "Semiotics and Cultural Heritage" explores throughout on different representations the broad concepts of culture, semiotics, and cultural heritage and their ‘semantic’ evolution in modern western societies It analyses the new methodological tools offered by semiotics with new perspectives and considerations of interpretation of cultural phenomena and new ways of perceiving the world. It aims to investigate and explore spaces, structures and environments where cultural phenomena and 'products', messages, meanings and representations are constructed and deconstructed. It examines the theoretical and sociopolitical context of an interpretative approach to cultural and archaeological heritage by analysing the multiple biographies of monuments and objects making use the interpretive ‘channels’ of the rhetoric of semio-narratives.

Focus is placed on the critical analysis of practical and methodological semio-tools through case studies. Emphasis is given to the analysis of the framework of cultural management, structures and practices for a holistic approach of integrated implementation studies, aiming at the sustainability and production of new methods of development and creation of postmodern cultural 'products'.

Taught by: Archondia Polyzoudi

Combining elements of iconology, extra-linguistic communication and cultural studies, contemporary semiotics of the image constitutes the central axis of a complex cultural hermeneutics that combines synchronicity and diachronicity, analysis and critique. Focusing on artworks, posters, photographs, websites, maps and logos, the course aims at a broad understanding of the features and dynamics of contemporary pictorial environment.

Taugh by: Gregory Paschalidis

If the illiterate of the future is the one who cannot handle the camera as Moholy Nagy wrote in the interwar, today we would say he is the one who cannot read the photographic images. Child of nature (light) and culture (writing), photo-graphy is a double index, the creator and the reality; the objective event and the subjective imagination. Document or art, commercial or political marketing, a window in the world or a mirror of ourselves (selfies), in any case, photography is a semiotic matrix that makes sense. Τhe course will discuss the conditions and the scope of this meaning through the history of the medium. More specifically, we will examine:

• the picture as icon, index, symbol, denotation, connotation, studium, punctum
• photography’s semiotic difference from other images (drawing,painting, cinema)
  
• photography as an anatomy of society (by Walker Evansand beyond)
  
• the discourse of  photography
  
• the applied photo: advertising, politics, print and electronicpress, social media
  
• the meaningful shift brought about by the digital revolution in the traditional function of photography as a trace of reality.

Taught by: To be announced

Taking into consideration the theory of semiotics, the aim of this course is to focus on the semiotics of audiovisual discourse in the media of popular culture, such as the cinema and television. Specifically the object of our study will be the narrative audiovisual texts (feature films mainly, we well as TV series) as the most popular forms of cultural expression.

Given the explosion of technology lately, audiovisual discourse tends to upstage traditional written discourses. Therefore it is imperative to start examining how images and sounds function in audiovisual narrative texts, in other words to investigate how they operate as signs in the signification system of cinema and TV. The main concerns in this course will be aspects of perception and the aesthetics of image, sound, motion, as well as the narrative codes that operate in the production and comprehension of meaning in storytelling.

Taught by: Michalis Kokkonis

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600123701/M1 

The aim of the course is to present the most important approaches to the phenomenon of intersemiosis and of cultural adaptation from the perspective of the research fields of Semiotics of translation, Visual Semiotics and Intericonic and Interart Studies. In this context, cases of transmutation of the information load between different semiotic systems, such as language, picture, pose, spatial composition, colors, etc. are examined. 

Taught by:  Evangelos Kourdis 

Taught by:  Titika Dimitroulia 

Detailed course presentation: 
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600158703 

The starting point is the dialectic of symbols, motifs and themes in the poetic and visual language with a model of artistic and verbal intertextuality, based on the concept of the intertextuality of Riffaterre. An indicative scope in the first lessons is the comparison of the poetic and visual work of the Greek surrealist poet and painter Nikos Engonopoulos based on the multimodal myth of Orpheus (five paintings in correspondence with eight poetic collections).Subsequently, we shall proceed to the further decoding of symbols, motifs, themes and myths, attempting to synthetically interpret poetic, visual, musical and cinematic discourse, as reflected in works that are part of the international surrealistic movement (Breton, Dali, Éluard, Max Ernst, Magritte, Tzara, Duchamp, Giacometti, De Chirico).Students are expected to develop special knowledge / skills in the following:

• analysis of text and image mechanisms,
• detection of multimodal myth as a hybrid structure of different semiotic codes, and,
• analysis of specialized applications for the blending of semiotic codes (encouraging them to personally create collages, edited pictures and videos).

Taught by:  Symeon Degermetzidis

The course deals with the construction of identities in pop culture discourse in the light of socio-semiotic theories. In particular, departing from a constructionist perspective, identities are viewed as dynamic and fluid entities that are realized and reconstructed in discourse. In this context, speakers are considered to actively shape their social reality, taking into account the social constraints and communicative orientations each time they pose / are posed to them. As interaction is considered to be the 'canvas' against which multiple identities are displayed and clash among the participants, we will focus on the analysis of fictional interaction, drawing on examples from cinema and television (television series, TV commercials). The social identities under study will be social class, gender, age and ethnicity, while all the indexical processes / semiotic systems (language and image) which are involved in the construction of identities in the (multimodal) fictional discourse will be considered. As pop culture constructs multiple versions of social reality in the institutional framework in which it is shaped, special emphasis will be placed on the ideological role of the fictional representations under study to reproduce and to subvert the hegemonic identities of gender, class, age and ethnicity.

Taught by: Anastasia Stamou

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600133256

The course initially aims to an extensive examination of the pop cultureʼs multiple facets and their various intersections.

In depth semiotic analysis on a wide variety of visual examples and cultural practices will help us trace the symbolisms involved, the artifacts themselves, the cultural processes, the influences from and the impacts on visual culture, on the over all lifestyles, on urban environment as well as in society at large.

The lessons will draw on examples from encountering fields and practices such as the comics, graffiti, cinema, the Press and TV, subcultures, DIY culture, music videos, tattoos, gastronomy, graphic design, fashion, the art world, entertainment and the cultural industries, sports, commerce and marketing.

Further cases examined extend from music concerts to events such as the Olympic Games opening ceremonies and the Eurovision song contests. From the underground parties to the club cultures, from mega events to the beach bars, from the fanzines to the free Press, to Youtube and Tumblr pages, from murals to memes and gifs. From the counterculture to consumer and hipster culture, expanding even further to notions such as style and fads, and to dualisms such as metropolis and periphery, high and low, grassroots and mainstream.

Ultimately, the course’s objective is an over all understanding of symbolic gestures, the various phenomena and actions, the cultural production, as well as a critical approach on the aforementioned.

Taught by: Οrestis Pagalos - Petros Petridis

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600180766 

Kinetics and gestuality, face expressions, color, pose and location in space, regard, tactile communication, objects as communicative inventions are just some of the nonverbal semiotic systems that integrate visual communication and which are the subject of this course.

Taught by: to be announced

The course is about semiotic analyses of text of general content where the core message is one or more non-verbal semiotic elements coupled with verbal elements. The texts to be analyzed have been published in various modes, such as print, audio-visual, digital and web-based and they are analyzed through the lens of multimodal semiotics. Multimodal semiotics is theoretically based on social semiotics and approaches the phenomenon of multimodal communication through a systemic functional perspective. In systemic functional linguistics communication is always context-based and embedded in social practice. On the other hand, in systemic functional semiotics it is possible to examine meaning that is created through the combined use of several semiotic resources.

Taught by:  Parthena Charalampidou

Semiotics of theatre is a methodological analysis of the theatrical phenomenon. It is divided into two branches: The Semiotics of the Dramatic Text and the Semiotics of Performance. The first branch focuses on the analysis of the textual code and the investigation of the relations between the various sign systems which are integrated in the text, aiming at the performance. The second deals with the theatrical act and practice itself, and aims at approaching the final aesthetic result on stage, that is, the performance, its codes and the multimodality that characterizes it. The two parts will be studied successively as autonomous and complementary integrals, drawing methodological tools from the Communication and the Reception Τheories at the same time, since the theatrical event itself, as a result of the transition from the text to the stage, has an intercultural and interdisciplinary dimension.

Taught by: Μary Bairaktari

The objective of this course is to enable students to understand the language of audiovisual texts and to familiarise them with key theoretical aspects and texts (that are adapted interlingually and intralingually). Students will be trained to analyse various audiovisual translation modes (subtitling, surtitling, dubbing, film and theatre adaptations, advertisements etc.). The course will comprise of both theoretical and laboratory work on various audiovisual genres with the use of new technology. Assessment will be based on a final project.

Taught by Loukia Kostopoulou

Based on the conception of politics as symbolic action, the semiotics of political communication examines thw forms and practices of signification that we commonly acknolwedge to have political intent and function. Specifically, it focuses on the study of the symbols, rituals and semiotic practices employed by all kind of political actors (state institutions and communication media, politicians and parties, social movements and NGOs) with the aim to shape and publicize their identity and ideas, to influence political attitudes, behaviors and processes, to build and mobilize political communities. 

Taught by Gregory Paschalidis

Detailed course presentation:
https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600141779