This under-researched theme focuses on the Romanian-American academic mobility (Romanian intellectuals’ migration to the US and their possible relocation in Romania) and the promotion of Romanian-American relations, intellectual elite formation, and transfers of models. It develops previous studies on Romanian academic itineraries (Sigmirean, Section B; Nastasă-Kovacs 2006), the Romanian intellectuals’ migration to the US, their participation in cultural events or the US science, politics, arts or literature, the Romanian diaspora’s organization, the Romanian-American societies and institutions in the US promoting cultural bilateral relations (Society of Friends of Rumania, Institute of Rumanian Culture in the United States) (Dobrinescu 1993; Sasu 1993). It envisages a comprehensive investigation of Romanian intellectual itineraries to the US, their interests in disciplines and professions, American academic centers, staff and curricula, or the students’ life, focusing on scholarship holders. Beside Rockefeller Foundation recipients in the fields of health, hygiene, sociology, demographic statistics, sciences, literature, it also investigates the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in education (Petrina 1997; Stanciu 1996). Further examination aims to uncover data about the American professionals in Romania and their contribution to interwar Romania’s modernization (from culture and education to architecture and telecommunication; air and automobile transportation; oil production, refinery and marketing, financial and insurance systems). It is an interdisciplinary (history of intellectual elites, cultural and social history, and history of international relations) exploration of primary sources (archives and published memoirs, the Rockefeller Foundation Annual Reports, the Carnegie Endowment Year Books).
Bibliography: Dobrinescu, Valeriu Florin, "Emigrația română din lumea anglo-saxonă", Iași: Institutul European, 1993. Nastasă-Kovacs, Lucian, "Itinerarii spre lumea savanta. Tineri din spaţiul românesc la studii în străinătate (1864-1944)", Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2006. Petrina, Ecaterina, "The Impact of Rockefeller Foundation on Romanian Scientific Development: 1920-1939", Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Sasu, Aurel, "Cultura Română în Statele Unite și Canada", Vol. 1, 2, Bucharest: Editura Fundației Culturale Române, 1993. Stanciu, Ion, "În umbra Europei. Relațiile României cu Statele Unite în anii 1919-1939", Bucharest: Silex, 1996. Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nationality_Rooms_2_(14400601666).jpg
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Update: titlurile se trimit până în 31 august!
În cadrul zilelor Academice Clujene, Institutul de Cercetări Socio-Umane „Gheorghe Șincai” din Târgu Mureș organizează Conferința Națională cu tema Secolul XX: tradiție si modernitate. Regimul comunist. În cadrul conferinței se va organiza și o secțiune cu tema Etosul educației și al dialogului: Negocieri culturale româno-americane (1920-1940). Evenimentul științific se va organiza la ICSU „Gheorghe Șincai”, în format mixt, online și cu participare fizică, în data de 28 octombrie 2022, între orele 10-18. Având în vedere preocupările științifice, exprimate în studii și volume, în proiectele de cercetare, vă adresăm invitația de a participa la evenimentul științific, cu rugămintea de a ne comunica tema conferinței până la data de 31 august 2022. Așteptăm confirmarea participării la tel. 0741 172 066 (C. Sigmirean), 0740 279 795 (Paula Matei) sau pe email la: [email protected], [email protected]. Cu deosebita considerație, Prof. univ. dr Cornel Sigmirean Director
1. Cornel Sigmirean, PhD, Senior researcher, History, the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute for Social Sciences and the Humanities, Professor, University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMFST), Târgu Mureș; experience in project management; author of books and studies within the project’s theme: history of international relations, intellectual history, history of the elites and education. (T1). Team members 2. Laurențiu-Dănuț Vlad, PhD, History, Professor, University of Bucharest, academic interests: international history, history of mentalities, imagology, cultural diplomacy, intellectual and cultural history, history of political ideas and ideologies; member of international and national projects and institutions (T2). 3. Carmen-Maria Andraș, PhD, Comparative literature, Senior researcher, the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute (retired); academic interests: comparative literature and cultural studies, travel, identity studies, imagology; director of two PCE research projects (2008 and 2011); author of books in Romania and abroad, articles and studies on related themes (T3). 4. Ionuț-Florin Biliuță, PhD, History, Researcher, the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute; international fellow; academic interests: history of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the genesis of anti-Semitism and theological racism in the Romanian Orthodox Church; recipient of several international scholarships, member of international projects and organizations (T4). 5. Anca Maria Șincan, PhD, History, Researcher, the “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute, PhD from Central European University, Budapest, in 2011; academic interests: the state-church relationship in Romania, Central and East European recent history, religious studies, church history; recipient of various international scholarships, member of research projects (Religions and Values: Central and Eastern European Research Network REVACERN, 2009, University of Vienna; CNCS Crossing borders. Insights into the Cultural and Intellectual History of Transylvania, “Gheorghe Șincai” Institute, 2011–2016; Fragmented Modernities: Intellectual Elites and Historical Transformations in Contemporary Romania, “Nicolae Iorga” History Institute, 2015–2017. (T5). 6. Sonia-Doris Andraș, PhD, Cultural Studies, PhD awarded in 2020 by University of the Arts London, final draft of her monograph on fashion and modernity in interwar Romania submitted to Bloomsbury UK; interested in fashion, modernity, gender and urban cultures, Romania and East Europe, memory. (T6). 7. Roxana Mihaly, PhD, History, “Nicolae Iorga” scholarship at the Romanian Institute of Culture and Human Research of the Romanian Academy – Venice, awarded by the Romanian Ministry of Education; academic interests: cultural diplomacy, political history/sciences. (T7). The historiography published in the United States about interwar Romania, World War II and the instauration of the Communist regime is extensive and richly documented (Clark 1922; Fischer-Galati 1970; Hitchins 1977, 1994; Livezeanu 1995; Quinlan 1995; Tismăneanu 2012). Romanian and United States interests did not reach concurrence and balance until the early twentieth century, with dialogues transcending commercial, political or immigration themes (Florescu 1993; Quinlan 1988; Stanciu and Cernovodeanu 1985). American diplomats continued to abide by the Monroe Doctrine and the insights from George Washington’s Farewell Address and refrained from political entanglements with foreign states especially in Europe, favoring trade instead (Razi 1988). By the interwar era, Romania’s geostrategic positioning between increasingly unstable influence spheres determined the United States to shift its diplomatic strategy in the region. The two nations officially became military allies when Romania forewent its neutrality in World War I and joined the Entente in 1916. The international key political players seized the chance to reconfigure the political geography around the now-defunct empires after the end of the Great War in 1918, when Austro-Hungary and Germany formally acknowledged their capitulation against the Entente. President Woodrow Wilson participated as the United States representative at the Paris Peace Conference. He actively lobbied for democracy and self-determination to be the core elements in Europe’s reconstruction. Wilson’s ideas expressed as Fourteen Points strongly impacted Central Europe, moving the balance of power from its European-centered tradition to the notion of collective security (Peterson 2014), which also led to the formation of Greater Romania (Devasia 1970). Romania and the United States maintained dialogue throughout the 1920s towards the mid-1930s, despite the Great Depression and growing isolationism (Stanciu 1996) and focus on the ‘petroleum policy’ (Buzatu 2011). Central and East European nationalism and subsequent restrictionism were perceived by US authorities as hindrances to economic exchanges (Randall 2005; Pearton 1971). Romania’s lack of satisfactory strides regarding minority rights, especially for the Jewish community, was also a serious concern for the United States (Quinlan 1977).
Historian and literary critic Virgil Nemoianu (1997) described the ‘ethos of instruction’ as crucial in Central European modern society as social recognition of individual ideals. Romania’s 19th century intelligentsia became an active agent in intercultural and political transfers, shaping its identity through history, language, culture in the European context (Charle 2001). Central and East European empires collapsed under the pressure of the Great War trauma and violent nationalism, in favor of national states. The end of World War I produced a schism between eras. Yet the new order could not abandon the past (Schmitt 2019). The interwar era was built around European cultural and educational centers, encouraging modernization of national education (Nastasă-Matei 2016, 46). But new power centers emerged, including the US as a political, economic, military and cultural sphere of influence, under temporary Central and East European decline. Cultural negotiation shifted its interest from European academic centers, towards the American cultural and political model (Huntington 1981). The project topic expands the literature on Romanian-US relations from diplomacy, politics and sociology (Răceanu 2005) towards education, culture, intellectual life, religion, gender, art. It aims to decode and correlate negotiations between cultures and disciplines. It offers a clear insight into how collective identity was recalibrated at the Age of Empires’ end, amid turbulent power center fluctuations. The world’s new political configuration brought a more solid and persistent redistribution of cultural and university centers, with the United States in full affirmation. This contribution is especially important in recovering the ignored or deliberately omitted facts regarding the interwar dialogues between Romania and the United States. As this relationship is ever more important in the 2020s, this project joins the post-1989 significant strides in restoring productive cultural and educational negotiations between the two partners. America’s growing attention towards Romania in the interwar era extended beyond history, politics and diplomacy, with financial, cultural and educational investments. The interwar Romanian-American relations thus imply inherent complexity and dynamism. This project offers innovative methodologies and themes analyzed through interdisciplinary, multi-perspective and inter-cultural approaches stemming from notions like negotiation, dialogue or educational and cultural communications. The timeframe covers two crucial decades in Romania’s history, from 1920 with Romania’s recognition as a national state, until 1940 as Romania aligned itself with the Axis as a National Legionary State. 1930 is both a midpoint and a landmark of Romania’s veering towards increasingly extremist political, cultural and social movements. This project follows the complex negotiations between Romania and the United States as direct consequences of political and diplomatic debates and decisions in the interwar era and the first years of World War II. The research adds to the current literature on American Romanian relations and archival documents before 1920 (Rus 2018) with a comparative methodology, beyond the traditional description of the American-Romanian relations primarily in terms of America’s unilateral political and economic interests in Central and East Europe. It thus highlights flexibility, mobility and interchangeability, replacing the rigid hierarchies established on binary terms like center and periphery. This project examines instances of both successful and unsuccessful Romanian-American formative cultural and educational negotiations, beyond interpretations of unilateral transfers from the center, as the United States and the marginal Other, as Romania. It transcends self-focused perspectives, culpabilization and self-victimization, favoring panoramic intercultural and transnational views. The approach is interdisciplinary, ranging from history (cultural, intellectual, social, political, economic, history of education, history of religion, art history) to cultural (religious, fashion, travel, memory, identity) studies, and imagology. The research applies cultural studies concepts (negotiation, difference, diversity, discourse, power relationship, representation) to historical investigation to further relativize the borders between disciplines, identities and cultures.
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Case, Holly, The Age of Questions or a first attempt at an aggregate history of the Eastern Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many other questions over the Nineteenth century and beyond, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Charle, Christophe, Intelectualii în Europa secolului al XIX-lea, Iași, Institutul European, 2002; Les Intellectuels en Europe au XIXᵉ siècle: Essai d’histoire comparée, Paris: Seuil, 2001. Clark, Charles Upson, Greater Romania, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1922. Clark, Roland, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building, London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Dascălu, Nicolae, Imaginea României Mari în Statele Unite ale Americii în perioada interbelică: 1919-1939, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 1998. De Santis, Hugh, The Diplomacy of Silence: The American Foreign Service, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Devasia, A. Thomas, The United States and the Formation of Greater Romania, 1914-1918, A Study in Diplomacy and Propaganda, Dissertation, Boston College, 1970. Dobrinescu, Valeriu Florin, Emigrația română din lumea anglo-saxonă, Iași: Institutul European, 1993. During, Simon, Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction, London and New York, Routledge, 2005. Entwistle, Joanne. “The Dressed Body”, in Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun eds, The Fashion Reader, Oxford: Berg, 2014, pp. 138–149. Fischer-Galati, Stephen, Twentieth Century Romania, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Florescu, I. Gheorghe (ed.), Relații româno-americane în timpurile moderne, Iași: Editura Universității “Al. I. Cuza”, 1993. Gârdan, Gabriel, Episcopia Ortodoxă Română din America parte a Ortodoxiei Americane, Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007. Giorcelli, Cristina, and Paula Rabinowitz, eds. Accessorizing the Body, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Gorrell, Henry T., Soldier of the Press: Covering the Front in Europe and North Africa, 1936–1943, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009. Hitchins, Keith, Orthodoxy and Nationality: Andrei Şaguna and the Rumanians of Transylvania, 1846 – 1873, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. Hitchins, Keith, Rumania, 1866-1947, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Huntington, Samuel Phillips, Viața politică americană, București: Humanitas, 1994; American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Cambridge MA, Belknap Press, 1981. Kargon, Robert H., Karen Fiss, Morris Low, Arthur P. Molella, World’s Fairs on the Eve of War: Science, Technology, and Modernity, 1937–1942, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. Kohlrausch, Martin, Katryn Steffen, Stefan Wiederkehr, Expert cultures in Central Eastern Europe. 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Mihăilă, Rodica, Georgescu, Irina (eds.), Transatlantic Connections. Essays in Cultural Relocation, Bucharest: Integral, 2000. Miller, Matthew Lee, The American YMCA and Russian Culture. The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900-1940, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Nastasă-Kovacs, Lucian, Itinerarii spre lumea savanta. Tineri din spaţiul românesc la studii în străinătate (1864-1944), Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2006. Nastasă-Matei, Irina, Educație, politică și propagandă. Studenți români în Germania nazistă, Bucarest: Eikon, Cluj-Napoca: Școala Ardeleană, 2016. Nemoianu, Virgil, “Cazul etosului central-european. Instruirea dincolo de clase”, in Adriana Babeţi, Cornel Ungureanu (Eds.), Europa Centrală. Nevroze, dileme, utopii, Iași: Polirom, 1997, pp. 168-192. Pearton, Maurice, Oil and the Romanian State, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1971. 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Randall, Stephen J., United States Foreign Oil Policy since World War I: For Profit and Security, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2005. Razi, G. M., “Reflections on the First Sixty Years”, in Paul D. Quinlan, ed., The United States and Romania. American-Romanian Relations in the Twentieth Century, Woodlands Hills, CA: Amer Romanian Academy, 1988, pp. 11-33. Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Rus, Flaviu Vasile, The Cultural and Diplomatic Relations Between Romania and the United States of America: 1880-1920: Documents, Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2018. Sasu, Aurel, Cultura Română în Statele Unite și Canada, Vol. 1, 2, Bucharest: Editura Fundației Culturale Române, 1993. Schmitt, Oliver Jens, Der Balkan im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine postimperiale Geschichte, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer GmbH, 2019. 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Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Wolff, Larry, Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. Zahra, Tara, The Great Departure. Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World, New York: W. W. Norton, 2016. |
The Ethos of Dialogue and Education
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