The Legacy of Juri Lotman in Tartu, Estonia and the World

This webcast was commissioned from the Tartu department of Estonian Writers Union by the Stavros Niarchos Public Library of the New York Public Library with mediation by Tartu 2024 European Capital of Culture and is a sequel to „Legacy of Uku Masing in Tartu and Estonia“ (2022). In English, with Estonian subtitles.
Juri Lotman (1922-1993) was an internationally renowned intellectual and scholar. Born to Ukrainian Jewish parents in Leningrad, he escaped the ongoing wave of antisemitism, culminating in the "Doctors' Plot", by finding refuge in Tartu, within the safety of ancient walls of its university. Although Estonia was also occupied by the Soviet Union at the time, the environment was considerably more Western and Lotman didn’t experience hostility to his ethnic background. As his academic career developed at the University of Tartu, Lotman became the key figure in cultural semiotics. Well loved by his students and internationally respected for his works, Lotman went beyond the academe to have his own program on the national TV, and also wrote extensively for cinema. In the 2020s, after the celebrations of his centenary, Lotman’s intellectual legacy is still relevant and exciting - as is his life story.
About the Speakers
Merit Rickberg, PhD - Head of the Juri Lotman Semiotics Repository at the University of Tallinn. Rickberg was the main curator of Juri Lotman 100 centenary celebrations in 2022 and defended her PhD thesis, “Towards Complexity Thinking with Juri Lotman: Modelling Cultural Dynamics in Educational Systems” in 2023. Rickberg focuses on the contemporary and ongoing relevance of Lotman’s approach to complexity in cultural systems.
Peeter Torop, PhD - Professor of Semiotics of Culture at the University of Tartu. Torop expanded the scope of the semiotic study of translation to include intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual translation and stressing the productivity of the notion of translation in general semiotics. He is also a co-editor of the journal Sign Systems Studies, the oldest international semiotic periodical. As a student of Lotman himself, Torop shares his memories of Lotman as a teacher and mentor, ever in search of fresh insights.
Elen Lotman, PhD - Associate Professor of Film Arts, Baltic Film, Media and Arts School. An award-winning cinematographer, director and lecturer, Elen Lotman is a granddaughter of Juri Lotman and has also translated his works on film into Estonian. Sharing a more personal side of her grandfather, she tells of her childhood full of stories, fun and discovery, as well as Juri Lotman’s daily habits and love for Tartu.
This webcast has been made possible by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Estonian Ministry of Culture.