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Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva - Honorary Degree in "Conference Interpreting and Specialist Translation" conferred on 12 December 2018.

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On December 12, 2018, IULM University awarded the honorary degree to Julia Kristeva, one of the most important and influential intellectuals of our time: the prestigious award was given by the Rector, Prof. Gianni Canova. The awarding ceremony was motivated by Prof. Paolo Proietti, Dean of the Faculty of Interpreting, Translation and Linguistic and Cultural Studies, while the laudation will be held by Prof. Giovanni Puglisi, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literatures and Rector Emeritus. "European culture exists" will be the title of Julia Kristeva's Lectio Magistralis.

Linguist, philosopher, writer, semiologist and psychoanalyst born in Bulgaria, she has lived and worked in France since 1966. She has written dozens of works, translated into many languages, teaches Semiology at the State University of New York and at the University Paris VII - Denis-Diderot and directs the "Roland Barthes Center". She was the first to receive the important Holberg Prize in 2004, while in 2008 she founded the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, awarded annually to groups and individuals who are committed to gender equality and human rights.

She was the first to develop the concept of intertextuality in the 1960s and built a relationship between semiotics and psychoanalytical analysis (at just 26 years old she codified semanalysis in "Σημειωτική. Recherches pour un sémanalyse", 1967). She was one of the leading exponents of French feminism and also had a great influence on American and British feminism.

She has played a leading role in the French cultural world, in particular with personalities such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Philippe Sollers, as well as with Umberto Eco. She met and discussed with the highest representatives of international institutions, both lay and religious, from the French President François Mitterrand to Pope Benedict XVI. She is also known to scholars and the Italian public through the translations of her numerous publications in French published by the publisher Donzelli.