When Mikhail Epstein was still living in Moscow, he imagined what it would be like to work at an American university. He dreamed of an academic community in which people came from all over campus—theology, physics, history, statistics, biology—to share knowledge and intellectual imagination.

During his experience with Emory's Gustafson seminars in the late 1990s, he finally found the type of community he was dreaming about.

"What's so inspiring about these kinds of seminars is that everybody has a hidden biologist, physicist, or mathematician inside himself. And that hidden knowledge is awakened through dialogue with different kinds of people."

Epstein is a good example of a scholar who defies easy classification. He has shared his passion for Russian philosophy—as well as literature, linguistics, and cultural studies—in 18 books and roughly 500 articles and essays translated into 14 languages. He is widely regarded as one of contemporary Russia's most prominent scholars in the humanities.

In 2000 Epstein was awarded the Liberty Prize for his contributions to Russian-American culture. It was only the second year of the prize, which annually recognizes two outstanding Russian scientists, writers, and artists who have moved from the former Soviet Union to the U.S. Other winners have included a poet and two visual artists.

The previous year, Epstein entered an international essay competition that asked writers to describe different ways of looking at time—past, present, and future. Out of approximately 2,500 submissions from 123 countries, Epstein's essay was one of ten winning entries.

He believes it is part of a scholar's responsibility to show where society and culture have been—and in which direction they are moving. His award-winning essay and upcoming book describe his belief that we are moving into a new period of creativity.

His award-winning website, which he calls InteLnet (short for Intellectual-Net), follows his belief that the Internet is an instrument of the human mind to expand into space and time. To that end, he has created a site that hosts a community of electronically connected humanistic minds, which use the web as a way to connect across cultures and disciplines.

FYI

Mikhail Epstein is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory. He was also the founder and former director of the Laboratory of Modern Culture, Experimental Center of Creativity, in Moscow. In 2002-2003, he was Senior Fellow at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory, working on the project "The Future of the Human Sciences." For six years (1998-2001, 2003-2006) he also served as Gustafson Scholar and Co-chair of the University Faculty Interdisciplinary Seminar at Emory.

What People Are Saying about Mikhail Epstein:

"Epstein is probably the most important figure in Russian literary theory in the post-Bakhtin, post-Lotman era. What he has to say is of great interest to everyone interested in cultural studies." (Walter Laqueur, chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"The prolific, inexhaustibly inventive Mikhail Epstein has produced a novel-almost...Whether you do Russia for a living or simply love the spectacle of dullness broken up into a thousand crazy glittering points of light, you will recognize, in reading [Cries in the New Wildnerness, 2002], a passion of your own." (Caryl Emerson, Princeton University)