9432
Call for Papers
deSignis No. 48
deSignis invites submissions of articles, essays, and case studies for a thematic issue on “Semiotics of Myths.” The issue proposes a critical, interdisciplinary, and methodologically reflective approach to the ways in which myths produce, organize, transform, and contest meaning in past and contemporary cultures.
Myth has historically constituted one of the privileged objects of semiotic inquiry. From the foundational contributions of structural anthropology and the semiology of culture to contemporary approaches associated with narratology, visual studies, communication, cultural memory, and digital media, myths have been understood as symbolic devices capable of shaping collective imaginaries, legitimizing systems of values, structuring historical experience, and projecting horizons of meaning.
The semiotics of myth has a well-established theoretical tradition that, from different perspectives, has addressed its narrative structures, cultural functions, and dynamics of transformation. This field of inquiry has been further strengthened by initiatives such as the proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of the Spanish Association for Semiotic Studies, Mitos (edited by José Ángel Blesa Lalinde, 1998). Other noteworthy contributions include Santiago Guillén’s Sémiotique du mythe (Classiques Garnier, 2026) and issue 9 of deSignis, Mitos y ritos en las sociedades contemporáneas (2006), coordinated by José Enrique Finol.
In a context characterized by accelerated media circulation, the transnational circulation of narratives, and the proliferation of digital environments and artificial intelligence, it is necessary to reconsider the place of myths in the contemporary production of meaning. Far from constituting mere vestiges of the past, myths continue to operate as dynamic cultural matrices that articulate identities, emotions, memories, conflicts, and collective expectations.
The issue has three main objectives:
1. To critically reassess the principal semiotic traditions that have approached myth as an object of study;
2. To analyze the transformations of mythical structures across the diverse languages, media, and cultural practices of contemporary societies;
3. To explore the cognitive, social, political, aesthetic, and ideological functions of myths in diverse historical and cultural contexts.
We begin from a central premise: myths are not merely inherited narratives or symbolic repertoires from the past; they are active cultural mechanisms that participate in the construction of possible worlds, the configuration of individual and collective identities, and the organization of social experience. Theirpersistence and capacity for adaptation reveal an extraordinary semiotic plasticity that enables them to traverse historical periods, media, and regimes of signification.
This issue invites contributors to approach myths as dynamic processes of semiosis circulating across different media, discourses, and cultural practices. From this perspective, we encourage dialogue among semiotics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural history, literary studies, visual studies, media studies, communication, myth criticism, cultural psychology, and the digital humanities.
We invite contributions addressing topics including, but not limited to:
• Semiotic theories of myth: critical reassessments of the approaches developed by Saussure, Cassirer, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Lotman, Durand, Eliade, Ricoeur, Greimas, Edgar Morin, and other foundational thinkers.
• Myth, narrative, and culture: relationships among narrative structures, collective imaginaries, and processes of signification.
• Myths and ideology: political, social, and cultural uses of myth in the construction of identities, memories, and discourses of power.
• Contemporary mythologies: analyses of myths in advertising, mass media, cultural industries, social media, and digital environments.
• Myths and visuality: mythical representations in the visual arts, cinema, photography, comics, video games, and other forms of visual culture.
• The intermediality and transmediality of myths: the circulation, adaptation, and transformation of mythical narratives across different media and languages.
• Myths, technology, and artificial intelligence: emerging mythical configurations associated with automation, posthumanity, intelligent machines, and technological imaginaries.
• Myths, ecology, and the Anthropocene: contemporary reinterpretations of the relationships among humanity, nature, and the environment.
• Gender, body, and myth: feminist, queer, and decolonial resignifications of mythical narratives.
• Myths, memory, and cultural heritage: processes of transmission, reinterpretation, and appropriation of foundational narratives.
• Local and global myths: tensions between specific cultural traditions and processes of transnational circulation.
• Methodologies for the semiotic analysis of myths: new theoretical, comparative, and interdisciplinary approaches.
This issue seeks to contribute to a renewed understanding of semiotic studies of myth, highlighting their continuing relevance as a conceptual framework for understanding contemporary cultural transformations. In keeping with the intellectual tradition of deSignis, the issue proposes an approach that brings together theoretical reflection, empirical analysis, and interdisciplinary openness, attending both to classical forms and to emerging manifestations of the mythical in contemporary societies.
Contributions will be accepted in Spanish and Portuguese. Essays must comply with the deSignis editorial guidelines and will be evaluated by the journal’s Editorial Committee before being sent for peer review.
GUEST EDITORS
Asunción López-Varela Azcárate (alopezva@ucm.es)
Marta Silvera Roig (marta.silvera@ulpgc.es)
TIMELINE
Deadline for abstract submissions (max. 300 words): March 15, 2027
Notification of proposal acceptance: April 1, 2027
Deadline for submission of full articles: May 5, 2027
Publication date: January 1, 2028
See the Author Guidelines: https://www.designisfels.net/guia-de-redaccion/