posta romana - Martha Garcés, Spanish Educator

keynote speaker
4th annual
romanian studies
conference
March 25—26
2011
Stella Ghervas is currently a visiting associate professor in the University
of Chicago’s Department of Political Science. Professor Ghervas was born in
Chisinau, Moldova, and she completed her BA and MA in Philosophy and
Political Sciences at the University of Saint Petersburg, Russia. She then went
on to study history at the University of Bucharest where she wrote her PhD
thesis on the works of Alexandre Sturdza.
Professor Ghervas continued her studies at the University of Geneva, where
she received a Master of European Studies degree in 1998 and a PhD in
Humanities in 2002. Her first book Alexandre Stourdza (1791–1854). Un
intellectuel orthodoxe facea l'Occident was published in 1999. Her most recent
book Reinventer la tradition. Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la SainteAlliance was published in 2008 and received the Prix Guizot of the Académie
française in 2009 and the Xenopol Prize of the Romanian Academy in 2010. It
is currently being translated into Russian, Romanian, and Greek. Her current
research project, entitled “Enlarged Europe: from the Holy Alliance to the
Treaty of Lisbon. A historical approach of the cultural foundations of European
construction,” is supported by a research fellowship from the Institut d’Etudes
Avancées in Paris.
thank you
The Indiana University Romanian Studies Organization would like to thank the
following sponsors for making this event possible:
Russian and East European Institute
IU Student Association
Department of History
The Tocqueville Program
Horizons of Knowledge
Romanian Studies Organization President Erin K. Biebuyck would like to
thank our presenters, commentators, and the many volunteers who helped to
make this event possible, especially Michael Young, Benjamin Thorne, Catalin
Cristoloveanu, Leonard Leid, and Professor Maria Bucur.
Many thanks to Martha Garcés of Two Five Five Five for designing our beautiful
posters and programs.
posta romana
Hosted by Indiana University Romanian Studies Organization
RomSO@indiana.edu
Sponsors: REEI, IUSA, Department of History,
The Tocqueville Program,
Horizons of Knowledge
I
U
S
A
Schedule
Friday, March 25  Maple Room, IMU
2:15–2:45
Registration and Welcome
2:45–4:30
Panel I: Memory, Museum, and Map: Relocating
Romania
5:00
Keynote Address by Stella Ghervas
Visiting Associate Professor, University of Chicago
“How far from Europe? Romanian Society
between Orthodoxy and Modernity”
Saturday, March 26  Rosebud Room, IMU
8:30–9:00
Registration
9:00–10:15
Panel II: Agency and Authenticity under Socialism
10:30–12:15
Panel III: Searching for National Destinies
12:15–1:15
Lunch
1:15–3:00
Panel IV: Rebuilding Nations, Rebuilding Selves:
Choices in a Postwar Context
3:15–4:30
Panel V: Voices from the Ether: Technologies of
Political Resistance
Panel I
Friday, March 25  2:45–4:30 pm
Memory, Museum, and Map: Relocating Romania—
Lynn Hooker
“The Writing and Re–writing of a City: Bucharest Public Spaces Since 1945”
by Oana Druta and Eric Burnstein
“Creating a Museum, Building a Nation: the Museological Construction of
Greater Romania in the National Village Museum” by Michael Young
“Imagining the ‘Class:’ Social Tourism and the Making of the Working Class in
Socialist Romania during the 1950s–1960” by Adelina Stefan
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Fourth Annual Romanian Studies Conference
Nicholas Sveholm is a PhD student in the eastern European history program
at Indiana University Bloomington. His research focuses on German
minorities in interwar Romania and their relationships with diaspora aid
organizations based in the Weimar Republic, but his broader interests include
concepts of diaspora and the institutional intersections of religion and
nationalism. Nicholas did his undergraduate work at Augustana College in
Illinois, and spent a year volunteering in a church archive in Sibiu, Romania
before finding his way to IU.
Mirela Tanta is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago
where she is writing her dissertation “Didactic Art or Sites of Resistance:
Socialist Realism in Romania, 1945–1989.” Originally from Romania, where
she taught philosophy and directed theater, she came to America as an
ArtsLink program fellow in poetry and as a guest of the International Writing
Program at the University of Iowa. Her poems can be found in journals
such as: Watchword, Another Chicago Magazine, and Milk Magazine. She
has presented her scholarly work at: UIC, The Art Institute of Chicago,
Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is
teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary art, theory
and criticism at UIC and at Columbia College Chicago. Currently, with
the generous support of the Dean’s Scholar Award, she is working on her
dissertation in a coffee shop across the street from her house in Rogers Park.
M. Benjamin Thorne is a PhD candidate in East European history at Indiana
University Bloomington. During the 2008–2009 academic year he was
the Raul Hilberg Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
where he conducted research for his dissertation, “The Anxiety of Proximity:
The ‘Gypsy Question’ in Romanian Society, 1934–1944 and Beyond.” This was
followed by research in Romania with funding from Fulbright-Hays and the
Social Science Research Council. A former Editorial Assistant for the American
Historical Review, Ben has presented his work at numerous international,
national, and regional conferences.
Michael Young is a second year graduate student in ethnomusicology at
the University of Indiana Bloomington. His research focuses on musical
nationalism in the former Eastern Bloc and the mediation of minority
groups in popular and expressive culture. In his musical career, Michael has
performed with numerous orchestras as a double bassist and folk choirs in the
US and Russia. In his spare time, he enjoys participating in East European and
North American folk dancing societies in his local community.
Indiana University Romanian Studies Organization
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Presenter Biographies
Irina Popescu was born in Brasov, Romania and was raised in Bucharest
throughout most of her childhood. Later, she moved to the United
States where she completed her middle and high school education. After
receiving her BA in English at UT Austin, she completed an MA in English at
UC Santa Barbara. Currently, Irina is a PhD student in Comparative Literature
at UC Berkeley. Her research centers primarily on political subversion, human
rights, and literature of resistance, particularly during periods of
dictatorship focusing mainly on Latin American, Eastern European and
and Anglophone literature.
Sebastian Schulman received a BA with Distinction in History and Jewish
Studies from McGill University in 2006. Since that time, he has worked at
the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Workmen’s Circle and other
organizations as a teacher, translator, researcher and coordinator of
educational programs. In 2007–2008, he was awarded a Jewish Service
Corps Fellowship by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee,
during which time he assisted in revitalizing Jewish life in Minsk, Belarus
and Chişinău, Moldova. He is currently pursuing an MA in Russian and East
European Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.
Claudia Serbanuta is a PhD student at the Graduate School for Library and
Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds
a Master of Science degree from the same school. Her research focuses on
unravelling communications and information organization and sharing
practices in Eastern Europe with a special emphasis on memory institution
in Romania and how these are being influenced by the introduction of new
technologies. The partial results of her research have so far been presented
in poster sessions and panels at several LIS specialized conferences. Claudia’s
research interests are also reflected in her professional activities. She helped
organizing Social Informatics workshops and serves as a judging committee
member for the Community Participation Contest organized by IREX Romania
and founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to assist with the
introduction information technology in Romanian public libraries. She is an
administrator and active member of Prolibro, a collective blog for Romanian
LIS professionals and she has published several articles on library-related
subjects in Romanian cultural journals.
Adelina Oana Stefan is a PhD student in History at University of Pittsburgh
working on a thesis entitled Mass Tourism and the Making of Consumer Culture
in Socialist Romania during the 1960s–1980s. She received her MA in Central
and East European history from Central European University, Budapest.
Adelina’s publications include several articles, among others, “The Socialist
State and Workers’ Leisure in Communist Romania of the 1950s” in Interstitio:
East European Review of Historical Anthropology (June 2007, 1) pp.119–130.
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Fourth Annual Romanian Studies Conference
Panel II
Saturday, March 26  9:00–10:15 am
Agency and Authenticity under Socialism—Christina Illias
“One Woman is Every Woman: Socialist Realist Paintings of Elena Ceausescu”
by Mirela Tanta
“Does Caring under Oppression Sometimes Reinforce Inequality? Power and
Authority in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” by Bogdan Popa
Panel III
Saturday, March 26  10:30 am–12:15 pm
Searching for National Destinies—Maria Bucur
“Saxon Jews? Identity and Culture in the Jewish Communities of Saxon
Southern Transylvania” by Julie Dawson
“Blut ohne Boden: Diaspora Activism and Interwar Romania’s German
Minorities” by Nicholas Sveholm
“A Secret Power: American Multinationals and the Construction of Greater
Romania, 1919–1926” by Justin Classen
Panel IV
Saturday, March 26  1:15–3:00 pm
Rebuilding Nations, Rebuilding Selves: Choices in a Postwar
Context—Padraic Kenney
“A Sort of Liberation: The Experience of Roma Returnees from Transnistria,
1944–1948” by M. Benjamin Thorne
“Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu’s Paradox: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of Romania’s
Leading Communist Intellectual” by Gina S. Lentine
“Rebuilding Rumenye: Three Anthologies of Yiddish Literature in Romania,
1945–1947” by Sebastian Schulman
Panel V
Saturday, March 26  3:15–4:30 pm
Voices from the Ether: Technologies of Political Resistance—
Aurelian Craiutu
“Journalism and Twitter—The #pman Case Study” by Claudia Serbanuta
“The Radio, the Exiled Voice, and the Mute Poet in Communist Romania”
by Irina Popescu
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Presenter Biographies
Eric Burnstein is a dual masters candidate at the University of Michigan in
urban planning and public policy. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, Eric worked
with a regional government in the north of the Republic of Moldova, where
he also learned Romanian. Since then, he has continued to study the
language and the region, and spent three months in Timisoara, Romania,
where he worked with a local organization as a consultant on urban
development.
Eric’s academic interests include the political-spatial dialectic, cities in political
and economic transition and housing and neighborhood development.
Stemming from his background in literary studies, he also maintains an
interest in politics and narrative construction. His previous research has
included examining the construction of national identity through the writings
of Lebanese authors, and documenting the overlay of socioeconomic,
linguistic and religious geographic divisions in Montreal. After completing his
masters program in 2012, Eric plans to work in urban policy analysis.
Justin Classen is a first-year PhD student in the Department of History at the
University of Pittsburgh. He received an MA in Regional Studies in 2010 from
the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University Bloomington,
where he held the Romanian Studies Fellowship between 2008–2010. He
earlier earned an MA in History at the University of Vermont (2007) and BAs in
History and Political Science at Williams College (2003).
Julie Dawson graduated from Northwestern University in 2002 with a BM in
Ethnomusicology and a BA in German. She spent 2002–2003 as a Fulbright
scholar in Berlin researching Turkish jazz and other immigrant music in
Germany and remained working in Berlin until 2007. During this period she
became increasingly involved in the Yiddish cultural arts scene and began
traveling extensively to former centers of Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe
and studying this history. In 2007 she relocated to Sighișoara, Romania
as a Peace Corps volunteer, working as an elementary school teacher and
organizing Jewish heritage and cultural events, including klezmer and
Yiddish song concert tours, photo-documentary exhibitions, and community
education programs for various NGOs throughout the country. Her thesis
research springs from this experience and is focused on the German-speaking
Jewish communities of southern Transylvania and the Bukovina. In 2010 she
moved to New York City, where she works as an archivist at the Leo Baeck
Institute, a center for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking
Jewry. She is completing an MA in Jewish Studies and certificate in East
Central European Studies at Columbia University.
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Fourth Annual Romanian Studies Conference
Oana Druta is an urban and regional planning student at the University of
Michigan. She is a native of Romania, and a remote resident of Bucharest. Her
interest in the city was enhanced by the multiple occasions to study different
economic, geographic and planning aspects of Bucharest throughout her two
years of masters. Oana plans to return to Bucharest after finishing her studies
and contribute to the current efforts to understand and shape the city.
Oana’s background is in anthropology and cultural studies, and her main
focus areas in the field of planning are community development, citizenship
education and public participation. Her interest in the shaping of public
spaces comes as an extension of these preoccupations. She is also interested
in neighborhood economics and housing issues.
Gina S. Lentine is a Master of Arts candidate at the Center for Eurasian,
Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University in Washington,
DC. Her research focuses on social and cultural history in interwar Eastern
Europe. Her master’s thesis addresses the Promethean Movement (1918–
1939), a collective effort between the young nations of Eastern Europe
and Eurasia to maintain independence in the face of Soviet and fascist
encroachment, and how nationalism undermined the success of the
movement.
In addition to her work on Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Gina has also researched the
Ukrainian theatre artist Les’ Kurbas, as well as the Polish absurdist Stanisław
Witkiewicz (a.k.a. ‘Witkacy’). In all of these pieces, she considers the delicate
balance between the individual and extremist politics.
Gina is a three-time Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow. She
was also awarded the Edwin E. Beinecke, Jr. Fellowship for her volunteer
efforts in summer 2010 with a women’s rights NGO in Krakow, Poland. Gina
has also held internships at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the American Enterprise
Institute. She graduated with honors from Wellesley College in 2009, where
she double-majored in political science and Russian area studies.
Bogdan Popa is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science Department,
Indiana University. He has a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bucharest,
Romania, where he specialized in contemporary American philosophy, with
a focus on the work of John Rawls. He is a visiting scholar with the Institute
for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan. Bogdan’s main
research interests are feminist theory, normative and critical theory, and
psychoanalysis, with a focus on the intersection between feminist theory and
relational psychoanalysis. His current project is a psychosocial interpretation
of John Stuart Mill’s gender tensions.
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