About the Author

floyd merrell has a BA (1963 Arizona State University), an MA (1966 New Mexico Highlands University), and a PhD (1973 University of New Mexico). He was a high school teacher of chemistry and physics at Alta Loma California (1964-66) and Albuquerque New Mexico (1966-70), and a professor of Latin American culture and communication theory (semiotics) at Purdue University (1973-2011). He also taught during the summers at the Catholic University in São Paulo Brazil (1991-99), and the Federal University in Salvador Brazil (2000-03). While a professor he wrote academic books for specialists and a string of articles. But he always sensed something was missing. His years of experience in Latin America had left him captivated by the promises and problems of inter-ethnic relations. With a burning desire to think out his feelings along these lines, he decide to try his hand at writing fiction. Finding Himself, whose protagonist is a young man with an Anglo father and a Mexican mother, is his first novel. Writing it raised more questions than he bargained for. Consequently he decided Finding Himself should be the first of a trilogy, and he is now at work on the second and third volumes. He is retired and living in Las Cruces New Mexico with his Mexican wife, Araceli.

Academic Career

    Books

Semiotic Foundations (1982). Pararealities: The Nature of Our Fictions and How We Know Them (1983). Deconstruction Reframed (1985). A Semiotic Theory of Texts (1985). Estructuralismo y proceso estructurante (1990). On Semiotic Modeling (1991). Signs Becoming Signs (1991). Unthinking Thinking (1991). Sign, Textuality, World (1992). Semiosis in the Postmodern Age (1995). Peirce’s Semiotics Now (1995). Signs Grow (1996). Peirce, Signs, and Meaning (1997). Simplicity and Complexity (1998). Sensing Semiosis (1998). Introducción a la semiótica de C. S. Peirce (1998). Sobre las culturas y civilizaciones latinoamericanas (1999). Tasking Textuality (2000). Change (2000). Signs, Science, Self-Subsuming (Arti)Facts (2000). Signs for Everybody (2000). Living Learning, Learning Living (2002). The Mexicans: A Sense of Culture (2003). Sensing Corporeally (2003). Complementing Latin American Borders (2004). Capoeira and Candomblé (2005). Processing Cultural Meaning (2007). Viver Aprendendo (2008). Entangling Forms (2010). Becoming Culture (2012). A semiótica de Charles S. Peirce Hoje (2012). Meaning Making (2013). The  Afro-Brazilian Art of Coping (2013).

    Articles

Over 200, in Professional journals.

    Conference papers, Addresses, Lectures, Invited talks

Over 330 in the United States. Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany.