Born:

17 January 1934 (Périgueux, France)

Degrees:

Admissible à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure (Rue d’Ulm), 1956.
Certificats de license d’enseignement:
Littérature française, 1 juin 1955 (Paris, Sorbonne). Etudes latines, 4 juillet 1955 (Paris,
Sorbonne). Etudes grecques, 4 novembre 1955 (Paris, Sorbonne) Psychologie générale, 9 juillet
1956 (Paris, Sorbonne) Diplôme d’études supérieures (Etudes latines), 10 juillet 1958 (Paris,
Sorbonne). Grammaire et philologie, 14 mars 1962 (Paris, Sorbonne).Première année d’arabe
littéral, 2 juillet 1956 (Paris, Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes)
Doctorat du Troisième Cycle en Linguistique (sémiotique), 18 juin 1970 (Paris, Sorbonne)

Employment:

University of Toronto, Victoria College (Department of French)
Lecturer (1962-1965). Assistant Professor (1965-1969). Associate Professor (1969-1974).
Professor (1974-1999). Emeritus Professor (1999- )
Self-employment as writer, editor, and lecturer (1999 to present)

Main awards:

The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, Fellow in residence (1972-1973)
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1973-1974)
Connaught Senior Fellowship (1988-1989)
Killam Research Fellowship (1989-1990 and 1990-1991)

Publications (Books) (1970-2024)

Les Demoiselles (creative writing), Editions de Minuit, 1970.
La mesure des gestes: prolégomènes à une sémiotique gestuelle, Mouton de Gruyter, 1973.
Circus and Culture: A Semiotic Approach, Indiana University Press, 1976.
Encyclopedia of Semiotics (editor), Oxford University Press, 1998.
Strip-tease de Madame Bovary (creative writing), Editions L’Interligne, 2004.
Saussure: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum Publishing Group, 2010.
Semiotics at the Circus. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010.
Circus as Multimodal Discourse: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.
The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning: Rituals of Transgression and Theory of Laughter.
London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
The Meaning of the Circus: The Communicative Experience of Cult, Art, and Awe. London:
Bloomsbury, 2018.
The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems (editor). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2018.
The End of the Circus: Evolutionary Semiotics and Cultural Resilience. Bloomsbury, 2021.
The Semiotics of Performances: An Introduction to the Analysis, Interpretation, and Theory of
the Performing Arts. London: Bloomsbury, 2025.

Editorial activities:

Recherches sémiotiques/ Semiotic Inquiry (Editor in chief, 1990-1995)
Advances in Semiotics (Series Editor:2012-2024), (thirty-five volumes published to date).
https://smartsemiotics.com https://semioticon.com/seo/ https://semioticon.com/sio/
https://semioticon.com (open semiotic resource center) https://paulbouissac.com