University of Tartu Press

12/08/2025

Thank you for sharing HEIA Hello Estonians in Australia !

A new English edition of Symbol of Dawn by Madli Puhvel invites readers into the life and times of Lydia Koidula — a great Estonian poet and a voice of national awakening.

06/08/2025

NEW: Madli Puhvel, "Symbol of Dawn. The life and times of the 19th-century Estonian poet Lydia Koidula". 2nd ed. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2025. 320 p.

Webshop: https://shop.ut.ee/en/pood/symbol-of-dawn-lydia-koidula/

In "Symbol of Dawn" Madli Puhvel presents the story of the life and times of Lydia Koidula to English-speaking readers. Koidula, who lived in the latter half of the 19th century, was the first great poet to write in Estonian. At the time, it was still considered vulgar in the Baltic provinces for a woman to have her name appear in print and her poems were published anonymously. An admiring contemporary dubbed the author with the 𝘯𝘰𝘮 𝘥𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘦 "Koidula", a name which in Estonian has connotations of "dawn". That name became universally recognized by Estonians who learned her patriotic poems at school. These were inspirational messages advocating ethnic pride and love of native land to a people who were just emerging from over 600 years of serfdom.

In her personal life the poet was plagued by depression. In this she shared the fate of many intellectually gifted women who lived during times when intellect in women was largely deplored. Her 𝘯𝘰𝘮 𝘥𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘦 was well known during her lifetime, but real recognition came largely posthumously. Today she is considered Estonia’s national heroine, a woman whose portrait adorned (before the adoption of Euro) Estonian currency and postage stamps.

Madli Puhvel added the following note to the new edition: "Conceived and published thirty years ago, in the early stages of Estonia’s renewed independence, this book was as an attempt to contribute to the nation’s cultural reintegration in the free West. During the 1990’s it was a steady sales success but has since been unavailable for many years. Meanwhile Estonia has become a fully integrated member of free Europe and a goal of world tourism. This reissue with minor corrections may find a new generation interested in the cultural past of this vibrant renewed nation."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Born in Estonia and educated in England, Canada, and the United States, Madli Puhvel holds a doctorate from the University of California. Besides her academic career as a research scientist and professor of medicine at UCLA she has cultivated an interest in literature, history, and biography.

09/10/2024

Volume 52(1/2) of the journal Sign Systems Studies is now available in both open access and print version.

It includes 3 thematic sections with 10 papers.

Section: Models, cognition and visualization
* A formal model of primitive aspects of cognition and learning in cell biology as a generalizable case study of the threefold logic of Peircean semiotics in natural systems / Timothy Rogers
* Semiosis and embodied cognition: The relevance of Peircean semiotics to cognitive neuroscience / Edna Andrews, Hayes Bierman, Brogan Hannon, Huijuan Ling
* The passions as seen through the lens of Greimassian semiotics and cognitive science / Amir Biglari, Marcel Danesi
* Triangle or tripod? Neither: A diagrammatic investigation into a sign’s visual representation / Thierry Mortier

Section: Lotman, past and future
* The problem of (re)generation of the past in Juri Lotman’s semiotics / Soo Hwan Kim
* Utopian semiospheres: Isolation and dialogue across borders / Artur Blaim, Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim

Section: Biosemiotics and sociosemiotics, linked
* Exploring domestic cat welfare: Gaps, challenges, and the role of zoosemiotics in feline well-being / Jana Tajchmanová, Nelly Mäekivi
* Simulated animal and simulated umwelt: Towards a method of analysing and critiquing nonhuman animals in consumer settings / Andrew Mark Creighton
* The silent war on signs: Unpacking the concept of semiocide and its implications for the Baha’i community in Iran / Erfan Fatehi
* Guiding interpretation towards deproblematization: A video interview with a Climate Change denier analysed as conspiracy theory / Heidi Campana Piva

The Reviews and Notes section includes the following:
* Language is not a thing: it is a practice! A conversation with Patrick Sériot / E. Israel Chávez Barreto

Online: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2024.52.1…

04/10/2024

Special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica - "Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine War", edited by Aaron James Wendland, is available in open access: https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/spe/issue/view/1926

The volume includes an interview with Margaret Atwood, and papers by Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Timothy Snyder, Volodymyr Yermolenko, Jeff McMahan, Gerald Lang, Fabio Lampert, Jonathan Wolff, Irina Zherebkina, Siobhan Kattago, Cynthia Nielsen, George Pattison, Nataliia Viatkina, Orysya Bila, Joshua Duclos, and Nataliia Volovchuk.