Several of our colleagues participated to the National Congress of Romanian Historians (Congresul Național al Istoricilor Români), held in Alba Iulia between 8 and 10 September.
The papers were presented within the section titled "Elite: mobilitate socială, politică și culturală (Elites: Social, Political, and Cultural Mobility)" moderated by EDERA - The Ethos of Dialogue and Education Project Director, Dr. Sigmirean Cornel. They were (in chronological order): ☑️ Dr. Sonia D. Andras: "Negocieri ale modei și frumuseții feminine interbelice: București - Paris - New York (Interwar Women's Fashion and Beauty Negotiations: Bucharest - Paris - New York)". See the abstract here: [RO] https://cnir.uab.ro/420 ☑️ Dr. Roxana Mihaly: "Modelul american în viața artistică a României interbelice (The American Moden in Interwar Romania's Artistic Life)". See the abstract here: [RO] https://cnir.uab.ro/510 ☑️ Dr. Carmen Andras, Dr. Sigmirean Cornel: "Negocieri profesionale româno-americane: Sabin Manuilă și parcursul său american ca bursier al Fundației Rockefeller (Romanian-American Professional Negotiations: Sabin Manuilă and His American Itinerary as a Rockefeller Fellow". See the abstract here: [RO] https://cnir.uab.ro/610 Find more information here about the event: [RO] http://cnir.conference.uab.ro/index.php
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The twentieth century, the era of interconnections, implies constant relationships between diverse fields of knowledge and mobility of ideas. Thus, an artist’s work became a nexus of ideas giving sense to an entire cultural epoch. One of the notable 20th century events, the 1913 International Modern Art Exhibition in New York opened the Romanian artists’ way to America through sculptor Constantin Brâncuși’s participation. A year later, he held his first personal exhibition in New York, conquering the art collectors’ world. In 1926, his American experience would bring him one of the most famous lawsuits in the world of art against the state, which redefined the ‘work of art’ notion. In the interwar era the Romanian Avant Garde theme is unavoidable. In the early 1920s, upon returning home, Romanian artists were attempting to revolutionize the artistic and literary scene. Constantin Brâncuși, Victor Brauner, Max Herman Maxy, Marcel Janco, Hans Mattis-Teusch, Arthur Segal and Jules Prahim, all were influenced by the modern artistic movements and entered a “battle” with Romanian traditionalism. Romania’s late opening towards modern art did not hinder painter Eustanțiu Stoenescu in the early 1930s to exhibit in US galleries and museums, catching the attention of many important collectors.
Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Steichen_-_Brancusi%27s_studio,_1920.jpeg This contribution explores the evolving ideals of women as markers of modernity in their dialogue with the United States though women’s fashion and representation. It builds upon the double understanding of embodiment as an experience mediated by culture (Entwistle 2014) of inhabiting a physical body in relation to beauty hygiene (Turda 2013) and gender (Bucur 2002) and as clothing the body (Giorcelli and Rabinowitz 2011) suggesting fashion and modernity (Wilson, 2010). The aim is to identify and decode the mechanisms of gendered negotiations between Romania and the United States on fashionability and their larger implications. This chapter uses an interdisciplinary model for a textual and visual semiotic analysis of relevant interwar Romanian discourse. It offers a panoramic, multi-faceted and comparative perspective on how gender norms were invented, disseminated and applied through fashion advice literature (Lees-Maffei 2001). It highlights the importance of fashion in shaping women’s lives to uncover interwar Romania’s subtle social, cultural, ideological and artistic practices in relation to the United States. This contribution continues a larger research on how fashion-consuming women mirrored interwar Romanian political, social, cultural and economic realities and offers the framework for future fashion studies research on Romanian topics.
~Bibliography~ Entwistle, Joanne. “The Dressed Body”, in Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun eds, The Fashion Reader, Oxford: Berg, 2014, pp. 138–149. Giorcelli, Cristina, and Paula Rabinowitz, eds. Accessorizing the Body, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Lees-Maffei, Grace, “From Service to Self-Service: Advice Literature as Design Discourse, 1920–1970”, Journal of Design History 14, no. 3 (1 September 2001), pp. 187–206. Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Btv1b8596962v-p037.jpg An Eastern European “school” surfaced during the First World War and was connected to Wilson’s vision of a new Europe of national states. The geography, languages, history, politics, and religion experts housed in academic institutions, political and diplomatic tracks, and diaspora communities directed the policy on this newly designed geographical and political area following the empires’ dissolution. This contribution to the project looks at the particularities of this post-Wilsonian school, the interests these specialists had in Eastern Europe and specifically in Romania. What did they know about it? What research is considered politically significant? Who were they and what were their positions in academia, politics and diplomacy? What were their connections with Eastern Europe? What did the US export in Eastern Europe (specialists, diplomats, religious men) and how they collected and supplied the data back home? These are a few of the questions the chapter attempts to answer. The ideological developments in the Soviet Union directed an academic interest in Eastern Europe, translated into US diplomacy. Since the closed border offered little access to information, the Eastern European border nations became portals into this new world developing in Russia. This concern was useful during and after the World War II, when this Eastern European “school” became crucial in designing the US Cold War policies. The contribution uses research in the US National Archives and the Archives of the Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, on primary literature (memoirs, travel books, histories of Eastern Europe from the period) and journal articles (Byrnes 1982; Case 2018; De Santis 1980; Kohlrrausch 2021; Little 1983; May 1973; Ramet 2020; Seegel 2018; Wolf 2020).
~Bibliography~ Byrnes, Robert, Awakening American Education to the World: The Role of Archibald Cary Coolidge 1866-1928, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. 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. 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. Kohlrausch, Martin, Katryn Steffen, Stefan Wiederkehr, Expert cultures in Central Eastern Europe. The internationalization of Knowledge and the transformation of Nation States since World War I – Introduction, https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/529773, 2010, Accessed 4 May 2021. Little, Douglas, Antibolshevism and American Foreign Policy, 1919-1939 The Diplomacy of Self-Delusion, in American Quarterly, vol 35, no. 4 (Autumn 1983), pp. 376-390. May, Ernest R., “Lessons” of the Past. The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Ramet, Sabrina (ed.), Interwar East Central Europe, 1918-1941 The Failure of Democracy-Building, the Fate of Minorities, London: Routledge, 2020. Seegel, Steven, Map Men Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Wolff, Larry, Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_readj_map27_1917.jpg The current emphasis placed by specialists in global history (Zahra 2016; Sarkisian, 2019; Hillis 2021) also impacted religious studies. Even if there were attempts to map the interactions between the North American religious landscape and Eastern Europe in the interwar period (Carlson 1993; Miller 2012; Clark 2020), the joint mobility of concepts and theologians/clergy members between the two areas remain highly under-researched. Previous scholarly research on Romanian-American religious interactions (Gârdan 2007; Săsăujan, in Bremer 2008; Clark 2020) limited their focus only to the Romanian context. Dwelling on a vast array of archival material (Romanian National Archives, regional branches of the National Archives), this study endeavors to comparatively highlight the mutual theological transfers between the American Protestant groups and the Romanian Orthodox Church during their interwar encounters. The dissemination of Evangelical ideas in the Romanian émigré milieu in the United States eventually echoed at home and led to the Orthodox popular religion hybridization and the formation of Orthodox groups of re-evangelizations known as the Lord’s Army (Oastea Domnului). Through its Orthodox bishopric, the Romanian presence in the US determined a constant accommodation of both the American state’s policies and the American religious landscape, especially in the Orthodox diasporas.
~Bibliography~ Bremer, Thomas (ed.), Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe. Encounters of Faiths, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2008. Carlson, Maria; No Religion Higher Than the Truth. A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1870-1922, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Clark, Roland, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building, London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Gârdan, Gabriel, Episcopia Ortodoxă Română din America parte a Ortodoxiei Americane, Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007. Hillis, Faith, Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Émigrés and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s-1930s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Miller, Matthew Lee, The American YMCA and Russian Culture. The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900-1940, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Sarkisian, Aram. 2019. The Cross between Hammer and Sickle: Russian Orthodox Christians in the United States, 1908-1928. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. Zahra, Tara, The Great Departure. Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World, New York: W. W. Norton, 2016. Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Romanian_Orthodox_Church_in_North_America,_Regina,_1904.jpg. In the context of the world wars and the growth of American interests in Central and Eastern Europe, the American press agencies dispatched their reporters there (Gorrell 2009). The research focuses on interwar American correspondents who traveled to Romania and whose memoirs have been published in volumes. The topic is under-researched, except for synthetic articles (Latham 2012). This study focuses on discourse analysis of an extended choice of war correspondents, the cultural negotiations between Romanian propagandistic policies and the American reporters who did not cooperate with the Romanian authorities (Dascălu 1998). It juxtaposes objectivity with prejudice or propaganda. The American war correspondence offers a complex image of the interwar Romanian political, social and cultural life, including dictatorships and anti-Semitism, both perceived as common Central and East European phenomena (Vasvàri and Tötösy 2009). Discourse analysis concentrates on primary sources, including the American reporters’ volumes and press collections. The topic is approached interdisciplinarily (comparative literature, cultural, identity, memory, travel studies, imagology) and builds upon the fluidity of transnational borders (Mihăilă and Georgescu 2000; Branea 2017).
~Bibliography~ Branea, Dorian, Statele Unite ale românilor. Cărțile călătoriilor românești în America în secolul XX, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2017. Dascălu, Nicolae, Imaginea României Mari în Statele Unite ale Americii în perioada interbelică: 1919-1939, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 1998. Gorrell, Henry T., Soldier of the Press: Covering the Front in Europe and North Africa, 1936–1943, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009. Latham, Ernest H. Jr., Timeless and transitory. 20th Century Relations between Romania and the English ˗ Speaking World, Bucharest: Vremea, 2012. Mihăilă, Rodica, Georgescu, Irina (eds.), Transatlantic Connections. Essays in Cultural Relocation, Bucharest: Integral, 2000. Vasvári, Louise O. and Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Introduction to New Work in Holocaust Studies." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 11.1, 2009. Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journal_of_the_session_of_the_North_Carolina_Conference_of_the_Methodist_Protestant_Church_(serial)_(1900)_(14598362479).jpg The chapter continues with further research and documentation the author’s previous work in Romania’s participation to interwar international fairs, the United States included (Vlad 2006). Symbolizing the persistence of the American dream even through the great depression, the theme of the 1939 New York World’s Fair was “The World of Tomorrow” (Dascălu 1998; Ureche 2015; Kargon et al 2015). Romania thus experienced the American dream and devoted herself to the ethos of dialogue, education, culture, history, respect for identity values and hope for the future within the two Romanian pavilions (ANIC 1938; AMAE vol. 212). The exhibition envisaged by D. Gusti, the Romanian Commissioner General and supported by Radu Irimescu, the Romanian Minister to the United States, contributed to the cultural dialogue and negotiation between Romania and the United States, beyond the propaganda directed to King Carol II’s dictatorship regime.
~Bibliography~ Arhivele Naționale Istorice Centrale (ANIC), Bucureşti, fond Ministerul Industriei şi Comerțului (MIC), Direcția Personal, Administrativ, Secretariat (DPAS), dosar nr. 16 / 1938; fond Muzeul Saint-Georges (MSG), dosar 80 / 1939, http://arhivelenationale.ro/site/wpfb-file/muzeul-saint-georges-1750-1951-inv-1126-pdf/ Dascălu, Nicolae, Imaginea României Mari în Statele Unite ale Americii în perioada interbelică: 1919-1939, Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 1998. 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. Ministerul Afacerilor Externe, Arhiva, (AMAE) Bucureşti, fond Washington, vol. 212, https://www.mae.ro/node/1386. Ureche, Nicolae, Propaganda externă a României Mari, 1918-1940, Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 2015. Vlad, Laurențiu, “România la expoziția internațională de la New York (1939-1940). Un moment din istoria diplomației culturale autohtone: documente privind înființarea şi funcționarea unui birou de propagandă în SUA”, in Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review, VI, 4 (2006), pp. 949-958. Background image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurice_Ascalon_1939_New_York_Worlds_Fair.jpg. |
The Ethos of Dialogue and Education
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