Suchergebnisse

The present study applies the concept of identity negotiations, used in the field of psychology to describe the processes of self-representations and social interactions, in the sphere of cultural and historical studies, applied in the research of the American war correspondent Leigh White's reports about Romania between 1939–1940, more exactly about the partition of North-West Transylvania. The attention will be focused on the negotiations between the identity representations of this correspondent about Romanians and minorities in this space and how social interactions satisfy or contradict self-representations and the objective goals of these interactions. The historical contexts in which these identity negotiations take place between the self and the other (the others, in the multi-ethnic and multicultural space of Transylvania) will be those with an extreme identity charge, proving how negotiations and communication can be suppressed in conditions of war. The study focuses on the dramatic event represented by the cession of North-West Transylvania in favor of Hungary as a result of the Vienna Award in August 1940, with references to the Bucharest Pogrom of January 21–23, 1941, with the crimes and atrocities committed against the Jews, a subject that will be treated in a separate study. Journalists such as Leigh White and his colleagues Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Robert Parker, Robert St. John, Leland Stowe, Countess Rosa Goldschmidt Waldeck, or Ray Brock will try to understand the identity traits of the others, knowing their historical and cultural context and, at the same time, trying to negotiate with their own baggage of stereotypes, or with the propagandistic directions of the official American or Romanian discourses, or, in extreme cases, with local censorship. American war correspondents proved to be not only over-qualified and over-professional, but also cosmopolitan, tolerant, experienced professionals or young novices, full of energy and enthusiasm, struggling to get at any valuable information, regardless of distance and dangers in war zones. They were sharp observers, checking the news and comparing it with other sources before sending their reports to American publications. In this way, Romanian-American identity and cultural negotiations took place above local human interactions.

The cultural attitude of Eugen Negrici is generally perceived as innovative, defeatist, trailblazing. Getting rid of the methodological practices from the time of communism appears as emancipation from the literary pool marred by an outdated literary ideology and implies reaching a new attitude, a deconstructive, negative, polemical one. His perspective appears as one of unprecedented freshness, containing a sanitizing breath in the context of finding an unfrequented or less frequented path. Despite these aspirations and implicit intentions, in the position of a practitioner and not an ideologue, Professor Negrici uses a purely traditionalist methodological tool and shares in content the same middle path of a well-tempered conservatism.

After 1919, the medical elite and numerous intellectuals began to show interest to matters such as: the improvement of the human stock, the topic of health and the biological future of the Romanian nation. This essay aims to present and analyze the importance of the biological improvement of the nation around the year 1935. The year itself is significant due to the fact that it coincides with the foundation of the Department of Demography, Anthropology and Eugenics of the Romanian Social Institute and also in the same year the Royal Romanian Society for Eugenics and the Study of Heredity.

This article analyses proposes new considerations on the Romania's neo-Stalinist regime as reflected in the diplomatic documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium. In 1982-1983 the regime started to pay the country's external debt, exporting agricultural products at dumping prices, imposing huge sacrifices and burden on country's economic profit and on citizens standard of life. The Romanian stores ran out of food for years. The Ceausescu regime has forbidden the citizens to leave the country. Belgium, France, USA, and other Western countries started to criticize the regime, harsher and harsher. Romania's foreign policies of independence towards Moscow were still important for the Western interests, but their value decreased. USA even retired the highly symbolic Most-Favored-Nation Status. The Ceausescu regime became more and more isolated between 1982-1989.

As a crossing point of the ideological options, of ethnic issues and confessional confrontations, the Romanian culture seems to obey the alternating rhythm of the historical loss of memory and, at the same time, of the anamnesis. On this background, the present times always appear as being doubtful, always menaced. Such tearing proved to be advantageous to the proliferation of many ideologies which found the ideal scene for materialization. Thus, the literary ideologies appear as natural reflexes to this kind of tectonics. In fact, there is not any specifically Romanian in all these phenomena. Ruptures have always been instrumented and used in ideological battles everywhere on the earth.

This paper explores how Bucharest's cinema-going public perceived the Nazi influence on Hollywood in the 1930s. The aim is to identify how Nazi propaganda was disseminated and consumed in interwar Bucharest and its similarities to the idea of glamour, relevant both to fashion and cinema. Considering the links between Goebbels' propaganda machine and certain entities or individuals in Hollywood, US cinematography becomes a more complex medium of dissemination beyond a mere promoter of modernity's technological and consumerist ideas. Romania's situation in the 1930s, especially the increasing leaning towards the extreme right then inform movie star image, particularly through a gendered lens, as perfect tools for propagandists. The interwar cinema-centered Romanian discourse involves a triple filtration, through Hollywood, Berlin, and Bucharest, as a complex depiction of the Romanian public's ideals and views. To illustrate these points, I will analyze relevant written and visual texts from the interwar era, including fiction, memoirs, essays, nationally and locally spread cinema-centered and general periodicals, postcards, or photographs. The interdisciplinary research will include cultural studies (fashion, media, cinema, gender), history, and discourse analysis. This innovative perspective on fashion and cinema in an interwar Romanian context adds to the existing knowledge by opening new research topics and subjects in the fields of fashion studies and Romanian studies.

The study analyzes lesser-known aspects regarding Sabin Manuilă's fellowship in the United States, granted by the Rockefeller Foundation between 1925 and 1926, at the suggestion of Iuliu Moldovan, the director of the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Cluj, whose assistant he was. Manuilă distinguished himself in the fields of epidemiology, immunology, demography, biostatistics, biological anthropology, eugenics, ethno- and biopolitics, occupying important scientific and administrative positions. Romania's cooperation with the Rockefeller Foundation was an important factor in the modernization of scientific and institutional research in fields that required considerable human and financial investments: public health and hygiene, medical assistance, natural sciences, sociology, statistics. Substantial support has materialized in fellowships, professional training and scientific research in the United States of America. On the basis of the Scholarship File, the study analyzes the professional negotiations between Manuilă and representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation related to his academic career based in Baltimore, and some divergences related to his specialization. Initially, Prof. Moldovan recommended him in 1925 to specialize in hygiene, with the possibility to cover fields such as statistics, demography, organization of the health service. Manuilă will prefer social sciences despite the American recommendation to focus on hygiene. The Scholarship file follows in detail the evolution of his scientific and administrative career from the grades he obtained, his return to his country and his activities, the research scholarship from 1938 with A. Pavel and D. Gusti, the refuge in America after 1948, until the negotiations for naturalization and the failed attempt to raise awareness among the American public about the Soviet danger. The study provides unprecedented information about the American stage of Sabin Manuilă's professional and human training as recorded by Rockefeller officers.

This paper presents the research made in Transylvania referring the history of peregrinatio academica during the Communist regime, focusing on the most important work published about this topic: the book of Sándor Tonk, entitled "University attendance of Transylvanians in the Middle Ages", published in 1979 in Hungarian language. I will discuss the sources, the primarly and secondarly literature, and the methodology used, and the critical reception of this book, as well the continuation of the Transylvanians' investigations concerning the history peregrinatio academica.

The 20th century has often been defined as the era of great changes, of interconnections, of the circulation of ideas, which constantly undergo changes under the pressure of the context, all of which inevitably marked and influenced the artistic concepts of the time. Any artistic creation is due to the impact of the antagonistic exposure that the artist makes between the creative impulse and the reality that is often foreign to art. Almost every time when we talk about art, this cannot be sustained, valued without those who consume the art. When the artist's work resonates with the image of feelings, the connection between the artwork and the art collector is inevitable, but each work is experienced by the individual in his own way. Throughout history, art collectors have been either important names of the aristocracy or people financially very powerful, they marked the history of art in one way or another, even reaching in time to acquire the skills of a specialized connoisseur. Considered the cultural center of the arts in the interwar period, Paris represented an ideal meeting point between Romanian artists and art consumers from the USA. Names such as Edward Steichen, the lawyer John Quinn, Alfred Stieglitz, Walter Pach or Peggy Guggenheim were previously attracted by the art of Brâncuși, Victor Brauner or Hedda Sterne.

In both public and private life, aggressive exposure to communist ideology through acts of culture, false or misleading information generates an alternative reality. Therefore, one of the first purposes of the political agitation was to shape the public's perception regarding global and domestic issues. Presenting events and facts one-sidedly, overwhelming people with visions of a possible paradisiac socialist society, and appealing to frustration creates a confusing but conveniently manipulated context. By creating such a situation, citizens were encouraged to become informers who were rewarded for revealing enemies of progress and setting an example of civic morality. As a result of public and private spaces degradation, a passive and resigned citizens emerged. By providing a comprehensive overview of the communist agitator's work, this study is intended to bring it to the attention of the public. Additionally, it will discuss agitator's ideological education, the techniques and the strategies he was recommended to, and how he approached the agitation duties. To carry out this study, the booklet "The Agitator's Booklet" will be used as a primary source, which reflects the agitator's work regading political-patriotic education,propaganda and many more.

In both public and private life, aggressive exposure to communist ideology through acts of culture, false or misleading information generates an alternative reality. Therefore, one of the first purposes of the political agitation was to shape the public's perception regarding global and domestic issues. Presenting events and facts one-sidedly, overwhelming people with visions of a possible paradisiac socialist society, and appealing to frustration created a confusing but conveniently manipulated context. By creating such a situation, citizens were encouraged to become informers who were rewarded for revealing enemies of progress and setting an example of civic morality. As a result of public and private spaces degradation, a passive and resigned citizens emerged. By providing a comprehensive overview of the communist agitator's work, this study is intended to bring it to the attention of the public. Additionally, it will discuss agitator's ideological education, the techniques and the strategies he was recommended to, and how he approached the agitation duties. To carry out this study, "The Agitator's booklet" will be used as a primary source, which reflects the agitator's work regading political-patriotic education, propaganda and many more.

La nivel internațional, producția de studii și volume dedicate romilor se află de câteva decade într-o efervescență fără precedent. Ea este facilitată de progrese privind instituționalizarea liniei de studii prin înființarea unor departamente din ce în ce mai numeroase pe lângă universități și institute de cercetare din vestul și din estul Europei. Fenomenul a adus cu sine nu doar un număr de cărți publicate la edituri prestigioase, ci și înmulțirea numărului de reviste științifice de profil. Pe lângă deja respectabilele ca vechime și continuitate publicații periodice Études Tsiganes și Romani Studies (anterior anului 1999 cunoscut ca Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society), care continuă să apară și în prezent, în anii din urmă au luat naștere numeroase alte reviste și anuare editate în limbile naționale sau în limba engleză.

This paper follows the distribution, reception, and influence of Hollywood productions, using the particular case of the movie Roberta, starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers. It follows all stages from preparation, production, dissemination, and critique, and how they were seen from and reacted to in interwar Bucharest. The timeline focuses on the mid-1930s and two-three years before and after. Owing to the difficulties experienced by cinema studios on both sides of the Atlantic and the impending financial crisis in Hollywood, the movie had to rely on the popular Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers pair. Because of this change, the original story was modified to fit the two dancing stars, promising more of a Fred and Ginger extravaganza than a typical romantic musical. Because Roberta did not follow the Fred and Ginger formula, it was soon overtaken by the pair's largest success, Top Hat, released roughly a year later and has remained largely ignored. The movie was first shown in Bucharest seven months after its initial release in March 1935, at the cinemas Capitol and Roxy, then American, and, finally, Orfeu, until early 1937. Movie reviews and reactions abounded in the general and specialized press, especially in 1936. Beyond its perceptible flaws in plot coherence and expected cinematic experience, Roberta can now be viewed as the closest snapshot into mid-1930s realities, from the level of the story, its modifications from the original informed by financial and censorship reasonings, the necessary promotional language and actions, and its reception, focusing on interwar Bucharest. It can provide valuable social, cultural, aesthetic, and even political clues about the United States, Hollywood in particular, and 1930s Bucharest in its modernity, cosmopolitanism, or fashion-consuming aspects.

This paper analyses the manifesting of Romania's independence from Moscow in 1968, based on diplomatic documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium. Romania's dialogue with Moscow, Prague, Belgrade and Paris are presented in this article. The article proves that beyond the political regime, the national interest of Romania was permanent and it has manifested itself when it had this chance. It was an act of courage, openness and prestige. It was a risky move, but Romania managed to avoid a Soviet invasion. Internally, however, the Bucharest regime did not embark on the path of reforms, but of neo-Stalinism, the cult of personality and communist ideological correctness.

The present article looks at the religious policy developed during the interwar period to encompass the ideological war with communist Russia that was later translated in what the literature termed the religious Cold War. It will regard this policy through the political and religious positioning of the US ambassador to Romania during the Reagan administration, David Funderburk. The article looks at the appointment of the North Carolina professor as ambassador as accomplishing the type of politics that were described by the literature as religious Cold War that reach an apogee in the Reagan years.