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Mar 25, 2018 at 22:00 comment added vol7ron @MassimoOrtolano it's amazing, isn't it? I suppose big trains take time to stop
Mar 25, 2018 at 21:41 comment added Massimo Ortolano Out of curiosity I reopened my copy and I discovered a few interesting things. I bought the book in 2005, some 8 years later having written my master's thesis and 5 years after my PhD thesis. I have no idea why I bought it so late. In the preface of the 1977 edition, Eco says: "At the time of this book’s publication, the reform of the Italian university is being debated, and there is talk of introducing two or three different levels of university degrees". Actually, it took some 30 years to have that kind of reform!
Mar 25, 2018 at 21:25 history edited cactus_pardner CC BY-SA 3.0
Corrected mention of Italian educational system
Mar 25, 2018 at 21:23 comment added cactus_pardner @MassimoOrtolano Thank you for the clarification! I don't have the book at hand, which probably explained some of that in the forward to the English translation. :)
Mar 25, 2018 at 7:42 comment added Massimo Ortolano Ha, Eco's book is a classic! :-) Virtually all those of my generation in Italy had read it! However, it comes from an era, before the Bologna process, where in Italy there was no distinction between undergraduate and graduate studies, because the nominal duration of the studies was five years. A six-month thesis at the time was rare, and it was not uncommon for theses to have a duration of 1-2 years, and most people would graduate after around 6 years, sometimes 7 or more. So Eco's book refers more to Master's theses.
Mar 24, 2018 at 18:24 comment added vol7ron misspelled "their" grrr. Yes, edit approved :)
Mar 24, 2018 at 17:53 comment added cactus_pardner @vol7ron Ah, I see! Perhaps it would help to edit the question to make it clear that you're looking for a pool of potential topics. In that case, it may also help people answer to specify more about what field you're in, since I imagine that might be organized by a learned society or a few really avid professors.
Mar 24, 2018 at 17:46 comment added vol7ron Thank you! I'll have to read Umberto's book. I also found this question posted before I asked (academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/…), but I was really hoping that their might be an aggregated pool of potential thesis topics that are available cross-universities for different concentrations to explore. Perhaps some that have been pre-vetted by professors.
Mar 24, 2018 at 17:10 history answered cactus_pardner CC BY-SA 3.0