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The RAAS - Fulbright Biennial Conference

Bucharest 22.05 – 24.05. 2008

The Sense of America.

Histories into Text

Conference Program

Thursday, May 22

Venue:                        Biblioteca Centrala Universitara, 2-6 Rosetti Street

9:00-10:00:                  Welcome and Opening Remarks (Sala Galateca):

H.E. Nicholas Taubman, U.S. Ambassador

Remus Pricopie, Secretary of State for Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Research and Youth

Sinziana Dragos, Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ioan Panzaru, Rector, University of Bucharest

Richard Anderson, Chair, the Fulbright Board of Directors

Radu Florescu, Manager, Saatchi&Saatchi

Barbara Nelson, Executive Director, U.S.-Romanian, Fulbright Commission

Rodica Mihaila, RAAS President

10:00-10:30:                Coffee Break (Sala Galateca)

10:30-12:00:                Keynote Lecture (Sala Galateca)

Werner Sollors (Harvard University). Americans All: “Of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown and Ellis Island”.

Chair: Rodica Mihaila

Venue:                        Facultatea de limbi si literaturi straine, 7-11 Pitar Mos Street

12:00 – 15:30              Registration  (Catedra de orientale)

12:30- 13:30:               Lunch (Sala de consiliu)

13:30-15:30:                Paper sessions 1, 2 & 3          

Session 1: The U.S. in Perspective (Sala 6)

Chair: Radu Surdulescu

Mihai Stroe. The Sacred Siouan Language versus Ashbery’s Poetic Language: Co-generators of Unity in Diversity.

Christian Tanasescu. History into Poetry and the “Word Trade Center” – American Verse after 9.11.

Sanja Šoštarić. Voices from the Land of Confusion: American Past, Present and Future in Don DeLillo’s and Philip Roth’s fiction.

Ioana Stamatescu. Deconstructing Space from an Ex-centric Position in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things.

Maria Stefanescu: Reading Cosmopolis – (Mis)reading America?

Radu Surdulescu. (Im)mortality in the ‘World City’: From the will to Power, to the Death Drive.

Session 2: Marginality and Empowerment  (Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Teodor Mateoc

Argentina Velea. War, Absurdity and Alienation: Hemingway’s Existentialist Hero.

Mariana Morgovan and Mihaela Ogasanu. Aim at the Individual and Somewhere the Masses will be hit or the Sense of America with Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Gabriela Dumbrava. Memory as Meta – space in Tom Franklin’s “Poachers”.

Teodor Ioan Mateoc. A Country Elsewhere:  Individual, Regional and National Identity in William Faulkner’s Narratives of the South.

Pia Thielman. African American Herstories According to Terry McMillan.

Bruce O’Neill and Kevin O’Neill. America’s Most Dangerous City: St.
Louis, MO.

Session 3: Reflections of Otherness (Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Chair: Smaranda Stefanovici  

Lucia Opreanu: David Lodge’s Sense of America. The evolution of British and American identities in a small 20^th century world.

Irina Toma. Philip Roth’s The Plot against America: An Alternate History.

Ilinca Anghelescu. Visible Man: Colson Whitehead and the New African-American Novel

Ema Stere. Ecology as Lifestyle and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Artur Jaupaj. Demythologizing the American West and/or the Western: E. L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times.                                            

Smaranda Stefanovici. The Immigrant Experience and Relational Conflicts of Identity: Hisaye Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Jade Snow Wong’s A Person as Well as a Female.

15:30-16:30:                Plenary Lecture (Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. ‘Global,’ ‘Globalization,’ ‘Americanization’: Grammar Politics in the ‘Post-Ideological’ Era.

Chair: Odette Blumenfeld

16:30-17:00:                Coffee Break (Sala de consiliu)

17:00-19:00:                Paper sessions 4, 5 & 6

Session 4: (Re)locations of Identity (Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Adina Ciugureanu

Krisztina Danko. Gay vs. Straight America in Tennessee Williams.

Raluca Rogoveanu. Allen Ginsberg’s Sense of America: Private Rebellion and Public Dissent.

Ileana Chiru-Jitaru. Strategies of adapting history to the film screen: The case of Good Night, and Good Luck.

Mihaela Precup. The Wound That Speaks of Unremembered Time: Nan Goldin’s Cookie Portfolio.

Chris Bell. Inventing American AIDS, (Re)Inventing America:  How the AIDS Crisis Contributes to American Mythmaking.

Adina Ciugureanu. Emancipating Attitudes and Liberal Thought in Adrienne Rich’s Poetry.

Session 5: Envisioning America (Sala 6)

Chair: Rodica Pioariu

Nicoleta Stanca. Irish America and the Northern Ireland Conflict. The Peace Process and “Soft Power” – Roots and Recent Manifestations.

Corina Marculescu. The Struggle for World Narration in the Age of Global
Media.

Ramona Mihaila. Writing the History of Early Romanian Immigration to America: Christina Galitzi and Serban Drutzu.

Ileana Marin. Romanians as Potential Americans or Looking at/for the Others’ Identity.

Adriana Bulz. Conflicted Histories into Dramatic Text: Long Day’s Journey into Night as a Site of Challenge.

Rodica Pioariu. The Spirit of America in Romanian Perception Before and After World War II.

Session 6: Histories in Narration (Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Chair:  Octavian Roske

Sorina Georgescu. America, or the School of Eloquence, in Caleb Bingham’s 1757 The Columbian Orator.

Anca Maria Campian. Jane Addams between Pragmatism and Pacifism.

Cristina Albu. Entropic Discourse in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Henry Thoreau’s Walden.

Octavian Roske. Recreating Legitimacy: Political Experience, Rationalism and Radical Equality in the American Revolution.

Iulia Blanuta-Milica. Visions of History in H. Melville’s Benito Cereno.

Freddie Fusman. 9/11: Memory and the Rewriting of History.

19:30-21:30:                Reception (Muzeul National de Geologie – National Museum of Geology, 2 Kiseleff Street)  

Friday, May 23

Venue:                        Facultatea de limbi si literaturi straine, 7-11 Pitar Mos Street

9:00 -13:30                  Registration  (Catedra de orientale)

9:00-10:30:                  Paper Sessions 7, 8 & 9

Session 7: Cultural Histories (Sala 6)

Chair: Virgil Stanciu

Alexandra Cornilescu. Histories into Artefact: A Plea for Realism.

Odette Blumenfeld. Reconfiguring History in the Plays of Suzan-Lori Parks and Joan Schenkar.

Mihaela Irimia. An American Dish to the Feast of Cultural Identity: The History of Ideas.

Stefan Avadanei. A Story of Multiple Deceptions.

Session 8: Textualizing the New World

(Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Mark Allister

Frank W. Brevik. The Tempest and the proto-American Dream. 

Petruta Naidut. Reports on the New World: Early Modern Cartographic and Ethnographic Narratives of Virginia.

Mariana Neţ. New York As It Was. Reading Notes of 19^th Century New York City Guides, 1807-1912.

Mark Allister. The U.S. as Savior or Satan: New England’s and California’s American Origin Stories.

Session 9: Society and Education: Codes and Ethics (Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Chair: Mariana Nicolae

Carolyn Keeler and Bob Ives. Personal and Participant Privacy Rights.

Mariana Nicolae. Leadership in the Cheating Culture – Role Models, Values and Discourse.

Jim Hicks. Can We Hear Them Now?: Ruminations on Twits, Listening Devices and Americanist Foreign Legions.

Adriana Vinţean. Cultural Influences on Our Non Verbal Messages in the U.S.A and Europe.

10:30-11:00                 Coffee Break (Sala de consiliu)

11:00-12:30:                Plenary Lecture (Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Michael Kammen (Cornell University). Art Controversies in American Culture, Historically Considered.

Chair: Irina Pana                    

12:30-13:30:                Lunch (Sala de consiliu)

13:30-15:00:                Workshops A I, B I and Paper session 10

Workshop A I: Research Webs: Working Together at the Dawn of the 21^st Century

(Sala 6)

Chair: Christian Moraru

Bob Ives. U.S./Romanian Collaborations for Empirical Research in Education and the Social Sciences.

Rodney Alsup and Marcel Duhaneanu. International Collaboration – An Executive MBA Program Experience.

Liviu Andreescu. Western Theory, Eastern Life.

Magarita Georgieva. A New Future for American Studies in France.

Discussion

Workshop B I: The Challenge of Race: Towards an African-American Literary Canon

(Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Chair: Emil Sirbulescu

Irina Vasilescu. “Black”-ness to Light: The Christian Experience as a Shaping Force of  Afro-American Consciousness.

Daniela Dorobantu. On Ishmael Reed’s poetics of multiculturalism.

Sorina Chiper. Black Boy - The Making of an Intellectual.

Sorin Cazacu. Humor and Irony in Toni Morrison’s Novels.

Session 10: Spaces of the Borderland (Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Eduard Vlad.

Simona Mitocaru. Jewishness in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.

Veronica Popescu. Being Seen, Being Heard, Being: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Reconfiguration of Chicana History Through Automitobiography.

Ruxandra Dragan. Race / Gender Politics and the 2008 Political Race.

Eduard Vlad. Aladin, the Devils and the Missing Djinni in Updike’s Terrorist.

15:00-15:30:                Coffee Break (Sala de consiliu)

15:30-17:00:                Workshops A II, B /II and Paper session 11

Workshop A II: Research Webs: Working Together at the Dawn of the 21^st Century

(Sala 6)

Chair: Christian Moraru

Phyllis Whitman Hunter. Translating (among Disciplines and between Cultures).

Alexandra Vranceanu. Romanian Literature Confronted with the Materialization of Goethe’s Dream and the Hypocrisy of “Global Literature”.

Marina Cap-Bun. Is there a Future for Virtual Romanian Studies?

Discussion

Workshop B I: The Challenge of Race: Towards an African-American Literary Canon

(Amfiteatrul Mark Twain )

Chair: Emil Sirbulescu

Ana-Maria Demetrian. The Grim Reality of Two Different Kinds of Slavery: Victorian Child Abuse and the Life of African American Slaves.

Roxana Mihele. Viewing the Other in Bernard Malamud’s The Tenants.

Monica Manolachi.  Black voices in the contemporary American poetry: “My father is a retired magician”.

Emil Sirbulescu. Ishmael Reed Revisited: A Late Reading of ‘Japanese by Spring’.

Session 11: The Rhetoric of the New World

(Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Ecaterina Popa

Estella Antoaneta Ciobanu. Mapping the New World: Disciplinary Zeal and the
 Logic of Scapegoating.

Remus-Virgil Campian. The Evolution and Involution of Myths in American Historiography. From Traditionalism to Post-Modernism.

Laura Savu. A Postmodern Sense of Walt Whitman’s America:   The Ethic of Care and Ethnic American (Hi)stories.

Yuya Kiuchi. Transatlantic Memory on Cable Television: Identity and Community Formation in Detroit’s African American Communities, 1970-1989. 

Mihai Mindra. Haunted in Post-9/11 America: Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost.

17:00-18:30:                RAAS General Meeting (Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

17:00-18:30:                Roundtable for Fulbright Grantees (Sala de studii americane)

19:30-21:00:                Music and Poetry Evening followed by Reception (American Cultural Center, 10 Dumbrava Rosie Street *):

                                    Alina Bottez – soprano

                                    Ieronim Buga – piano

                                    Cristian Tănăsescu – poetry

                                    Christopher Bakken – poetry

Saturday, May 24

Venue:                        Facultatea de limbi si literaturi straine, 7-11 Pitar Mos Street

9:00 -11:30                  Registration  (Catedra de orientale)

9:00-11:00:                  Workshop C I and Paper Session 12

Workshop CI: Transatlantic Dialogues. Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Post-Cold War Cultural Spaces

(Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Ileana Orlich

Bogdan Stefanescu. Reverse Ideology: Romanian Postcommunism and the Re-contextualizing of Postcolonial Emancipation.

Andrzej Antoszek. Cultural (Mis)-Representations: African American Culture and its Local, (East-Central) European Appropriations.  

Oana Godeanu. Identity, Nostalgia, and the Eastern European Past – “Goodbye Lenin!”

Dana Mihailescu. Jewishness – A Lens towards Postcommunist Romania and Democratic America in Norman  Manea’s Memoir.

Costinela Drăgan. Theorizing Romanian Travel Writing. An Approach to Post-communist Writings on the USA.

Ileana Orlich. Cultural Legacies and Limits of Representation: Matei Visniec’s The Body of Woman as Battlefield in the Bosnian War.

Session 12: Sites of Conflict

(Sala 6)

Chair: Dan Horatiu Popescu

Clementina Mihailescu. Two Ways of Perceiving Personal and Historical Connotations in Robert Duncan’s Poetry.

Anca Peiu. William Faulkner: Hues of Horror, Aspects of Abjection.

Dan Horatiu Popescu. On Air with Ezra Pound and Howard W. Campbell.

Maria Muresan. Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway-Two Pacifist Writers.

Eleonora Baca-Dragomir. After Apocalypse-Modern Strategy and Tactics in Pound, Wlliams and Zukofsky.  

Alexandra Mitrea. The Discourse of the African-American Other in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

11:00-11:30:                Coffee Break (Sala de consiliu)

11:30-13:30:                Workshop C II and Paper Sessions 13 & 14

Workshop CII: Transatlantic Dialogues. Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Post-Cold War Cultural Spaces

(Sala de studii americane)

Chair: Roxana Oltean

Asuncion Lopez-Varela Azcarate. Towards Intercultural Educational Mediation Through the Use of Technological Remediation: Europe and the US

Lubivaya Anna Igorevna. Russian Historicals Museums in the National-building Process: (Re)construction of Cultural Memory of the Soviet Time.

Anamaria Schwab. The Long Train of History in Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’ (Unfinished)

Ioana Luca. Revisiting Home or Marketing the Post-Communist Exotic?  Eastern European Itineraries with Eva Hoffman and Slavenka Drakulić

Roxana Oltean. Romanian Projections in the U.S. Print Media.

Session 13: Histories of Otherness

(Sala 6)

Chair: Phyllis Whitman Hunter.

Ludmila Martanovschi. The Sense of Native America: Reclaiming History in Simon Ortiz’s Poetry

Ruxandra Radulescu Re-imagining Communities in American Indian Life Stories: Louis Owens’s Visual Memoir.

Cornelia Vlaicu. Louise Erdrich’s Autobiographies – Ceremonial Healing and Identity Narratives.

Mihaela Paraschivescu. Mircea Eliade’s Escape from History: An Inquiry into the Views of his American Critics

Phyllis Whitman Hunter. Becoming American: The Empress of China in Canton.

Carolyn Keeler, Alina Buzarna, Lavinia Macarov, Alina Leonte, Silvia Nicolae, and Gabriela Stanciu. Two Cultures: Similarities and Differences Across Time.

Session 14: Representations of Culture

(Amfiteatrul Mark Twain)

Chair: Barbara Nelson

Alyssa Cwanger. Social Documentary Photography: Reforming with a Flash

Robert E. Roemer.  “High School Musical”:  Relief from “A Nation at Risk”

Eric Nelson.  Noir America: Hollywood’s Deconstruction of the American Dream, 1940-1956

Barbara Nelson. Magazines as Historical Battlefields: Romania 1938-45.

Puspa Damai. Making Sense of America with Spielberg’s The Terminal

Nadina Visan and Daria Protopopescu. Alternative Language as a Code for Alternative History: Translating James Ellroy’s and Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential

13:30-14:30:                Lunch (Sala de consiliu)

14:30-16:30:                Workshop C III

Workshop C III: Transatlantic Dialogues. Eastern Europe, the U.S. and Post-Cold War Cultural Spaces

(Sala 6)

Chair: Rodica Mihaila

Corina Suteu. Why Romania Cinema Translates Eastern Europe better in the US: Puiu, Porumboiu and Mungiu, the Uncanny  Ambassadors.

Nataliya Yeremeyeva. Political Alienation in Eastern Europe during the Post-communist Transition.

Sabina Draga. Globalization and Dialogue in Romanian American Internet Culture

Eleanor K. Roemer. The Fundamental Right to Vote: its Meaning in the Post-modern Period. 

Rodica Mihaila. Transatlantic cultural (Mis)translations: The U.S. Concepts of Multiculturalism and Culture Wars in Post-Communist Romania.

16:30:                          (Teatrul Foarte Mic, 21 Carol I Boulevard) “Colombo Calling: a play from Sri Lanka” by Cristina Bejan (US Fulbright Fellow): theatrical reading and discussion. Produced by Théâtre Fille de Chambre; live music by Daniel Beers (US Fulbright-Hayes Fellow). Open to the public, free admission.