Roberta "Bobbie" Kevelson (November 4, 1931 – November 28, 1998)[2] was an American academic and semiotician. She was an acknowledged authority on the pragmatism theories of Charles Sanders Peirce.[3]
During her postdoctoral time at Yale University (1979–1981), she introduced the concept of legal semiotics.[4] She subsequently established an international cross-disciplinary center for its study in 1984: the Center for Semiotic Research in Law, Government, and Economics at the Pennsylvania State University.[6][7] She had joined the philosophy faculty of the Berks Campus at Penn State in 1981, where she was awarded the AMOCO Foundation Outstanding Teaching Award in 1986.[5]
She was a visiting professor at several institutions, including The College of William & Mary, Virginia. Among her published works are High Fives, The Inverted Pyramid, The Law as the System of Signs and possibly her most significant work,[3]Peirce and the Mark of the Gryphon. She was a founding member of the Semiotic Society of America.[3]
Kevelson, Roberta, ed. (1991), Peirce and Law: Issues in Pragmatism, Legal Realism, and Semiotics, Peter Lang Publishing Group, 225 pages, hardcover (ISBN978-0-8204-1519-2), PLPG catalog page.
Kevelson, Roberta (1998 April), Peirce's Pragmatism: The Medium as Method, Peter Lang Publishing Group, 204 pages, hardcover (ISBN978-0-8204-3982-2), PLPG catalog page.
Kevelson, Roberta (1999), Peirce and the Mark of the Gryphon, Palgrave, 239 pages, hardcover (ISBN978-0312176945, ISBN0-312-17694-5).[8] Draws from unpublished Peirce manuscripts.