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Romanian Cultural Space and the Global World in the

Works of Diaspora Romanians

Anca-Teodora Serban-Oprescu. "East and W est: Romania

and America, or the Creolization of Cultural Spaces in

the Context of Globalization" 171

Elena-Adriana Dancu. ""Home, where?": Global Foreignersin the Plays of Saviana SHinescu" 183

Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru. "Poetry as Transatlantic

Dialogue: Forgiven Submarine by Ruxandra Cesereanu

and Andrei Codrescu" 201

Alexandra Florescu. "Influential R omanian Literary

Theorists Building Their Careers Abroad: Are They

Ours or Are They the World's?" 217

Representations of Romania inthe Global World through

Western Lenses

Diana Benea. '''Identity Debates in and beyond Herta

MUller's German and Anglo-American Reception".... 233

Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu. "Western Representations of the

Balkans: Romania as "Frozen Image"" 251

Dana Mihfiilescu. "Images of Romania in Contemporary

North American Narratives" 265

"Ode to Bucharest" 293

"Taking the air" 294

"From the colonies" 295

"In This City" 297

"Preambulatory" 298

Romanian Culture in the Global Age i s a c ollection of

essays which investigates the dynamics of Romanian culture in

the new, c ontext created by the interaction between t he f or ces of

globalization and those of post-communist transition and of post-

E.U. accession. In the two decades that have passed since the

collapse of communism, Romania, like all the other ex-communist

countries, has b ee n t hr ou gh a continuous process of redefining

and reaffirming its identity as a new democracy. The contributors

to the present volume attempt to provide answers to se veraltopical questions related to the shaping of the Romanian cultural

identity and the location of Romanian culture in the global world

following the country's ne w s tatus as a NATO and an E.U.

member: How does the local/glo,bal dialectic intrinsic to the global

world affect the r e-shaping of Romanian cultural i dentity? How

do the increasingly fast flow of inf ormation and the

communications revolution affect a country like Romania, whose

visibility has increased rapidly since the country became a NATO

and an E.U. member? How does the awareness of being one of the

world's democracies and an active participant in the wo r ld's

urrent debates change the way in which Romanian cultureimagines and reinvents itself as it becomes increasingly freer from

the mental manacles bequeathed by the communist regime?

In the attempt to tackle the se and other related questions,

the essays included in the present volume offer a rich variety of

thematic approaches, rang in g f r om studies that open broad

theoretical perspectives to case studies that emphasize original

Ipeets of c ontemporary Romanian culture at the interface with

( day's wor ld. In addition, as an imaginative touch to the

, adem ic f ormat, the volume includes in its Coda several po ms


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about the pulse of Romania's everyday life written by American

poet Martin Woodside, a Fulbright grantee, during his stay in

Romania, in 2009-2010.Accordingly, we have structured our volume in f our

sections, moving fr om a broad general perspective of Romanian

identities in theglobal world, to particular case studies of how the

Romanian cultural space is portrayed in Romanian in situ

productions, in works by diaspora Romanians and, finally, in

Western narratives. The Coda contains poems by Martin

Woodside.A first series of essays are grouped together under the title

Romanian Identities in the Global World: Cross-Cultural

Exchanges, a nd locate Romanian identities at t h e c r ossroads of

three spaces of analysis: post-communism, cultural legacy andthe global world. The opening essay of the volume, Roxana

Oltean's "Betwee n K itsch and Authenticity: Romanian Identity in

the Age of Globalization," attempts to draw atheoretical model to

locate Romanian identity in the global world, positioning it at the

intersection of kitsch and authenticity. With a similar objective in

view, Ovidiu Ivancu's essay "Romanians and Europe. Identity

Issues in the Global World" focuses on how Romania's accession

to the E.U. has rekindled the culture wars of the 1930's between

traditionalism and Europeanism and shows how the two types of

Romanian identity corresponding to those conflicting attitudes,

that of an archaic Romanian and a European Romanian, have led,in contemporary times, to the rise of a new image-type,

representative of Romanian identity - the "Roma?ian~in-

transition." Addressing all the three spaces of cultural mqUlry,

Rodica Mihaila examines the case of the 2009 Nobel Prize for

literature awarded to Romanian-born German author, Herta

M Ul le r. I n h e r essay entitled "Questions of Identity in the

Globalizing World. The Case of Herta MUller's Nobel Prize"

MihaiIa argues that, despite on-going academic debates favoring

fluid identities, as proved by this particular case, national identity

continues to represent a significant category of cultural analysis.

Sh ar ing t he c on ce rn f or i de nt if ying the most adequate

representations of Romanian identity, Marina Cap-Bun's essay,"Romanian Studies Programs and the Promotion of Romanian

Culture Abroad," discusses various strategies of promoting the

study of Romanian culture abroad.

T he la st th re e es sa ys i n t hi s f ir st se ct ion turn to

representations of Romanian identity in drama and poetry. I n her

essay "'Performing Memories: Communism as Rhizome,"

Catalina-Flor ina F lo rescu focuses on two plays by Mihaela

Michai lov a nd Ma te i Vi~niec, a nd dr aws attention to the

importance of incorporating th e m emories of the communist

experience into the substance of imaginative, artistic works.

Including communism in the rhizomatic f ormation of Romaniannational identity in the global age, she argues that performative

memory explored artistically is the best way to understand

ommunism's moral crimes a nd k eep them alive in people's

, nsciousness.

While Florescu describeS' Romanian cultural identity in the

I bal age as "rhizomatic," Adriana Bulz refers to it as

"dialogical" in nature. Bulz explores "the local/global dialectics of

I manian-American theater exchanges at the dawn of the twenty-

IiI' t century," aiming to explain how such instances of cross-

(ultural engagement can help develop Romanian cultura l i dentity

licllogically, within the larger context of globalization. Finally, inIii.. essay "Romanian Multimedia Poetry in the Global Age," Chris

I lnasescu d iscusses Romanian cultural identity in the global age

11 investigating how and to what extent European and American

IIvllnt-garde multimedia experiments have found their way in

Iiltemporary Romanian poetry.

The second section of the volume, Portraying Romania

1 11 1 I the Global World in Romanian Cultural Productions,

II 'Iudes a number of essays exami ni ng how in-situ Romanian

1 11111 I' and producers have inscribed Romanian identity in the


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global age. Among these, Costinela Dragan's essay, "Post~~old

War Conceptualizations of America in Romanian Travel WrItmg"

examines how two Romanian travel writers, Viorel Salagean andStelian Tanase envision shifted images of America in the post-, .1989 context as a multiethnic space and model of democracy, m

opposition to the negative conceptions previously shaped by

communist ideology a nd p ro pag an da . Th e o the r two essays

included here move on' to the re alm of film: Mihaela

Paraschivescu examines Mircea Eliade's personality and work as

source of inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 2007 film, Yo~th

without Youth; Camelia Anghel focuses on the recent Romanian

film, Francesca, and the contradictory debates it has given rise to

in Italy, arguing that the film is a meditation upon R omanians' ~nd

Italians' failure to und erstand each ot he r , deconstructmgstereotypical views of "the other." These essays try to determine

to what degree Romanian literature and cinematography can serve

as an internationally-relevant space of reflection capable of

increasing Romania's visibility in today's global age.

In the attempt to cover - as much as possible - the wide

variety of present-day cultural exchanges between Romania and

the global world, the essays in part three, Romanian Cultural

Space and the Global World in the Works of Diaspora

Romanians, focus on Romanian c ul tu r al d ia spora in the U.S.,

examining the way in which the transatlantic dialogue influences

diasporic identities. In this sense, Anca-Teodora $erba~-

Oprescu's e ssa y ar gues that the creolization of cultural spaces I~

an i nherent topic of Romanian diaspora narratives by AndreI

Codrescu, Gabriel Ple~ea, Alexandra Tarziu and Mirela

Roznoveanu. Elena-Adriana Dancu examines the plays of Saviana

Stanescu and shows how the author's immigrant characters

renegotiate Romania, and, more broadly, Eastern Europe, by

becoming global for eigners in America. Maria-Sabina Draga

Alexandru analyzes the r ole of poetry in the transatlantic d ialogue

y focusing on Ruxandra Cesereanu and Andrei Codrescu's

volume Forgiven Submarine. Finally, Alexandra Florescu tackles

the case of Matei Calinescu's lif e and work in R omania and the

.S. The leading idea of these essays refers to the experiences ofRomanian immigrants to the U.S., where America becomes a

space of reflection allowing for a renegotiation of East European

identity as fluid and in process.

The last section of the volume, Representations of

Romania in the Global World through Western Lenses, includes

'ssays aevoted to the way in which R omanian culture has

oppeared in WesternlNorth American narratives. Among these,

I iana Benea's essay, "Identity Debates in a nd beyond Herta

MUller's Ge rma n an d Anglo-American Reception," compares

MUller's critical reception in Germany and the Anglo-American

..pace, ranging from emphasis on her Romanianness to herI''Iocation in the position of the Communist other; the author

'oncludes on the writer's overcoming such binary debates and

Iituating her identity outside any fixed cultural categorization. In

11 ' I' essay "Western Representations of the Balkans: Romania as

""'I'ozen Image"," Ilinca-Mirt.ma Diaconu foregrounds the

I Tsistence of a culturally inferior image of Romania in Western

liscourse, following her clos e r eading of Tony Judt's article,

"R mania: Bottom of the Heap" (2001). In addition, Dana

Mihrtilescu's essay, "I mages of R omania in Contemporary North

merican Narratives," examines the representation of Romani a i n

111' narratives of three North American authors who travel ed to

Iomani a b etween 1999 and 2002, Aleksandar Hernon, Bruce

II 'nderson and Jill Culiner. In her reading, the image of the

I \Inanian cultural space inside t he r espective texts stresses

Inmanians' urgent need to fight a present-day amnesiac tendency

Illwurds the communist past by acknowledging and confronting

1\ ( ) major coordinates that have become deeply engrained in

I\ll'" nt-day Romanians' psyche, namely a persistent culture of

III i iona nd categorical discourse.


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The volume ends in a Coda, which includes five poetical

vignettes of Romania's everyday life, as seen by American poet

Martin Woodside. The poems ponder on the relation between

time's passage and people's hassled existence and on the typical

Romanian city. Seen as a multilayered site, it superposes the

image of tired and hard-working people with that of the begging

needy, and their strained attempts to balance indifference and

sympathy. Our intention, in that respect, has been that of offering

our readers an idea of the dynamic dialogical exchanges between

literature and cultural criticism by, hopefully, steering up

discourse and conversation in a fruitful way.

Considering the different angles of analysis presented

above, the essays in this volume are likely to contribute to the on-

going scholarly attempt towards the democratization of

transatlantic studies by presenting the Romanian/East European -

Western dialogue as a space of mutual and honest exchanges in

which criticism of "the other" is balanced by a responsible sense

of self-analysis. Finally, we hope that those interested in

Romanian culture in the global age will find in the present volume

original and stimulating approaches.

Romanian Identities in the Global

World: Cross-Cultural Exchanges

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