KEVELSON, Roberta 1931-1998

PERSONAL:

Born November 4, 1931, in New York, NY; died November 28, 1998; daughter of Barney Kahan and Helen (Peiros) Cohen; married Seymour Kevelson, September 23, 1950 (divorced, 1980); children: Lorin, Kenneth. Education: Goddard College, B.A., 1969, M.A., 1974; attended Brown University, 1978; postdoctoral study at Yale University, 1979-80. Religion: Jewish.

CAREER:

Bristol Women's Center, executive director, 1972-74; Bristol Textile Museum, president, 1972-75; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, assistant professor of philosophy, 1981, executive director of Center of Semiotic Research, 1984, associate professor, 1986, distinguished professor, 1987; writer. University scholar at Cambridge University, 1986, and University of New Mexico, 1992; visiting scholar at University of Virginia, 1988-89, and College of William and Mary, 1991.

MEMBER:

International Association of Law and Semiotics, American Philosophical Association, Semiotic Association of America, Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium (member of board of directors).

WRITINGS:

Style, Symbolic Language Structure, and Syntactic Change: Intransitivity and the Perception of It in English, Peter de Ridder (Lisse, Netherlands), 1976.

Charles S. Peirce's Method of Methods, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1983, new edition, J. Benjamins (Philadelphia, PA), 1987.

(Editor) Law and Semiotics, Plenum (New York, NY), 1987-89.

The Law as a System of Signs, Plenum (New York, NY), 1988.

Peirce, Paradox, Praxis: The Image, the Conflict, the Law, Mouton de Gruyter (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor) Peirce and Law: Issues in Pragmatism, Legal Realism, and Semiotics, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor) Law and Aesthetics, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1992.

Peirce's Esthetics of Freedom: Possibility, Complexity, and Emergent Value, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor) Codes and Customs: Millennial Perspectives, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1994.

Peirce, Science, Signs, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor) Spaces and Significations, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1996.

Peirce's Pragmatism: The Medium as Method, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor) HiFives: A Trip to Semiotics, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1998.

Peirce and the Mark of the Gryphon, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Also author of Inlaws/Outlaws: A Semiotics of Systemic Interaction, "Robin Hood" and the "King's Law," 1977, and The Inverted Pyramid: An Introduction to a Semiotics of Media Language, 1977. Editor of series Worldmaking/Signmaking, 1995. Editor-in-chief of Law and Semiotics, 1987-89, Semiotics and the Human Sciences, and Criticism of Institutions. Member of editorial board of Journal of Philosophy and Rhetoric and International Journal of Law and Semiotics.

SIDELIGHTS:

Roberta Kevelson was a philosopher who specialized in the study of semiotics and the law. Among her writings is The Law as a System of Signs, a 1988 publication exploring the notion of legal semiotics. In this work, Kevelson discussed C. S. Peirce's notion of rhetorical approaches to analyzing and expressing signs related to law, and she noted the extent of Peirce's influence in the field of legal semiotics. "The recurrent theme [in The Law as a System of Signs] is that of origin and firstness," contended Peter Goodrich in his Contemporary Sociology review. "Such firstness is to be understood both literally and figuratively." Goodrich described The Law as a System of Signs as "lyrically written and on occasion poetic in its insights," but he found the book "more commendable than recommendable." He claimed that "Kevelson does not state clearly the object of the new discipline," but he also conceded that the book can be "commended … for its ambition and its range of theoretical and historical reference." Choice reviewer P. K. Moser, meanwhile praised the book as "well written."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, June, 1978, review of Inlaws/Outlaws: A Semiotics of Systemic Interaction, "Robin Hood" and the "King's Law," p. 539; July-August, 1978, review of The Inverted Pyramid: An Introduction to a Semiotics of Media Language, p. 681; July-August, 1988, P. K. Moser, review of The Law as a System of Signs, pp. 1707-1708.

Contemporary Sociology, November, 1989, Peter Goodrich, review of The Law as a Systems of Signs, pp. 926-928.*