Professor
Office: LHS C225
Telephone: (705) 748-1011 x 7271
Email: paulmanning@trentu.ca
Education
Ph.D. Linguistics, University of Chicago, 2001
Research Interests
Linguistic anthropology, anthropology and history, semiotics (the study of signs), material culture, media, and folklore.
Profile
Paul Manning is a linguist and linguistic anthropologist, much of his current work and teaching is on the semiotics of material culture and media. He is the author of three books (Strangers in a Strange Land, Academic Studies press, 2012; Semiotics of Drinks and Drinking Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2012; and Love Stories, University of Toronto Press, 2015). His primary ethnographic field site is the country of Georgia, but he has also worked in Wales and Argentina on Welsh-speaking populations. Among other topics, he has written on the “spectral migrations” of various kinds of folkloric monsters in time and space, from Georgian goblins migrating into cities, and Cornish Pixies and Cornish Transatlantic mining spirits called Tommyknockers, to North American ghosts and Spiritualist seances. He is currently working on a long-term ethnographic project on the semiotics of gardens and urban space in the country of Georgia.