Professor of Liberal Arts

20.10.2021

Additional information:

vabadkunstid@ut.ee

737 5669

The position of the Professor of Liberal Arts was created in 1993 to develop spirituality and creativity of the University and city community. Each year a prominent Estonian artist is invited to take up the position of visiting Professor of Liberal Arts, whose activities relate to the traditional fields of activity of the University of Tartu. The Professor of Liberal arts is called for one academic year. The same person may be called up only once. Lectures held by the Professor of Liberal Arts are open to everyone.

Designer Reet Aus will be the 30th visiting professor of liberal arts

Designer and cinematographer Reet Aus will take up the position of Professor of Liberal Arts in the University of Tartu. She will be the 30th person to fill this honorary academic role.

In the 2021/2022 academic year, the position of the Professor of Liberal Arts was held by poet, essayist and translator Hasso Krull

Hasso Krull is a well-known intellectual who is active in various fields. His work often contains motifs from the heritage and mythology of Estonia and even more distant cultures. He has published more than 15 collections of original poetry, numerous collections of essays and also children’s literature. Krull’s works have been translated into many languages, such as Finnish, English, German, French, Swedish and Dutch, and he has received several prestigious cultural awards. Besides this, he is also known as a translator of fiction and philosophical literature and an active literary critic, he has written opera librettos and collaborated with several composers. For a long time, Hasso Krull taught at the Department of Cultural Theory of the Estonian Institute of Humanities, and has since dedicated himself to freelance work.

Hasso Krull's lecture course focused on understanding the society of the future. "Long ago, gods lived on Mount Olympus. Today, they live in the marketplace, or, more precisely, at the supermarket. But where will the gods of the future live?" asks Hasso Krull in his course. "A hundred years ago, our great-grandparents could hardly imagine the way we live now. Yet, we now have even less idea of how our descendants will live in a hundred years’ time. This is why we need to learn the art of attunement. Let us ask: how can we still exist? And how can somebody exist after us?"

"Hasso Krull’s activities in the cultural and literary landscape have been very diverse and therefore the lectures of his year of professorship are certainly of interest to teaching staff and students from a wide range of research directions of the university," said Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts Anti Selart, commenting on the choice of the professor.