VS Quaderni di studi semiotici.

Call for papers

Relevance and developments of Eco’s theory

1 and 2/2026

Edited by Anna Maria Lorusso, Claudio Paolucci, Patrizia Violi

In 2026 ten years will have passed since the death of Umberto Eco, which occurred on February 19th, 2016, enough time to start reflecting, coldly and not in the wake of the emotion, on the vitality of a conceptual, methodological and pedagogical legacy.

Aim of this call is to draw a map of the directions that Eco’s research has opened up in the field of semiotics, in order to identify the many trajectories of his thought. Trajectories that may as well have taken different or unexpected directions with respect to the original proposals of Eco’s work, whose full consequences have yet to be fully evaluated.

The contributions should not summarize Eco’s thought, nor should they simply consist on a philological comment of it. Rather, the texts that VS will publish must analyse its originality, heuristics and relevance within the frame of current semiotics problems and developments. Compilatory articles should therefore be avoided, as well as proposals that do not directly relate to elements present in Eco’s work.

Without prejudice to the semiotic specificity of the contributions, there are no specific constrains as far as the topic is concerned: chosen fields may consider narrative theory as well as media, history of ideas, semantics, and so on. Many themes are possible for an investigative and analytical approach, not encomiastic or ritualistic, capable of extending well beyond these ten years the resonance of Umberto Eco’s thought.

Proposals in English will be

Call for Papers here