Romania and the Quest for European Identity

Romania and the Quest for European Identity

Author: Cristian Cercel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1317061713

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Exploring the largely positive representations of Romanian Germans predominating in post-1989 Romanian society, this book shows that the underlying reasons for German prestige are strongly connected with Romania’s endeavors to become European. The election, in 2014, of Klaus Iohannis as Romania’s president was hailed as evidence that the country chose a 'European’ future: that Iohannis belonged to Romania’s tiny German minority was also considered to have played a part in his success. Cercel argues that representations of Germans in Romania, descendants of twelfth-century and eighteenth-century colonists, become actually a symbolic resource for asserting but also questioning Romania’s European identity. Such representations link Romania’s much-desired European belonging with German presence, whilst German absence is interpreted as a sign of veering away from Europe. Investigating this case of discursive "self-colonization" and this apparent symbolic embrace of the German Other in Romania, the book offers a critical study of the discourses associated with Romania’s postcommunist "Europeanization" to contribute a better understanding of contemporary West-East relationships in the European context. This fresh and insightful approach will interest postgraduates and scholars interested in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe and in German minorities outside Germany. It should also appeal to scholars of memory studies and those interested in the study of otherness in general.


Bulgaria and Europe

Bulgaria and Europe

Author: Stefanos Katsikas

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1843318466

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'Bulgaria and Europe: Shifting Identities' offers a comprehensive analysis of Bulgaria's relationship with the European continent, focusing particularly on its accession to the EU and the aftermath.


Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania

Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania

Author: Cristina A. Bejan

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-23

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 3030201651

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In 1930s Bucharest, some of the country’s most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members included historian Mircea Eliade, critic Petru Comarnescu, Jewish playwright Mihail Sebastian and a host of other philosophers and artists. Together, they built a vibrant cultural scene that flourished for a few short years, before fascism and scandal splintered their ranks. Cristina A. Bejan asks how the far-right Iron Guard came to eclipse the appeal of liberalism for so many of Romania’s intellectual elite, drawing on diaries, memoirs and other writings to examine the collision of culture and extremism in the interwar years. The first English-language study of Criterion and the most thorough to date in any language, this book grapples with the complexities of Romanian intellectual life in the moments before collapse.


Diaspora Online

Diaspora Online

Author: Ruxandra Trandafoiu

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-04-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0857459449

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After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, millions of Romanians emigrated in search of work and new experiences; they became engaged in an interrogation of what it meant to be Romanian in a united Europe and the globalized world. Their thoughts, feelings and hopes soon began to populate the virtual world of digital and mobile technologies. This book chronicles the online cultural and political expressions of the Romanian diaspora using websites based in Europe and North America. Through online exchanges, Romanians perform new types of citizenship, articulated from the margins of the political field. The politicization of their diasporic condition is manifested through written and public protests against discriminatory work legislation, mobilization, lobbying, cultural promotion and setting up associations and political parties that are proof of the gradual institutionalization of informal communications. Online discourse analysis, supplemented by interviews with migrants, poets and politicians involved in the process of defining new diasporic identities, provide the basis of this book, which defines the new cultural and political practices of the Romanian diaspora.


The Passport as Home

The Passport as Home

Author: Andrei S. Markovits

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9633864224

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This is the story of an illustrious Romanian-born, Hungarian-speaking, Vienna-schooled, Columbia-educated and Harvard-formed, middle-class Jewish professor of politics and other subjects. Markovits revels in a rootlessness that offers him comfort, succor, and the inspiration for his life’s work. As we follow his quest to find a home, we encounter his engagement with the important political, social, and cultural developments of five decades on two continents. We also learn about his musical preferences, from classical to rock; his love of team sports such as soccer, baseball, basketball, and American football; and his devotion to dogs and their rescue. Above all, the book analyzes the travails of emigration the author experienced twice, moving from Romania to Vienna and then from Vienna to New York. Markovits’s Candide-like travels through the ups and downs of post-1945 Europe and America offer a panoramic view of key currents that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. By shedding light on the cultural similarities and differences between both continents, the book shows why America fascinated Europeans like Markovits and offered them a home that Europe never did: academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity and religious tolerance. America for Markovits was indeed the “beacon on the hill,” despite the ugliness of its racism, the prominence of its everyday bigotry, the severity of its growing economic inequality, and the presence of other aspects that mar this worthy experiment’s daily existence.


History and Belonging

History and Belonging

Author: Stefan Berger

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1785338803

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In cultural and intellectual terms, one of the EU’s most important objectives in pursuing unification has been to develop a common historical narrative of Europe. Across ten compelling case studies, this volume examines the premises underlying such a project to ask: Could such an uncontested history of Europe ever exist? Combining studies of national politics, supranational institutions, and the fraught EU-Mideast periphery with a particular focus on the twentieth century, the contributors to History and Belonging offer a fascinating survey of the attempt to forge a post-national identity politics.


Quest for a Suitable Past

Quest for a Suitable Past

Author: Claudia-Florentina Dobre

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2018-01-29

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9633861365

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The past may be approached from a variety of directions. A myth reunites people around certain values and projects and pushes them in one direction or another. The present volume brings together a range of case studies of myth making and myth breaking in east Europe from the nineteenth century to the present day. In particular, it focuses on the complex process through which memories are transformed into myths. This problematic interplay between memory and myth-making is analyzed in conjunction with the role of myths in the political and social life of the region. The essays include cases of forging myths about national pre-history, about the endorsement of nation building by means of historiography, and above all, about communist and post-communist mythologies. The studies shed new light on the creation of local and national identities, as well as the legitimization of ideologies through myth-making. Together, the contributions show that myths were often instrumental in the vast projects of social and political mobilization during a period which has witnessed, among others, two world wars and the harsh oppression of the communist regimes. ÿ


The Moldovans

The Moldovans

Author: Charles King

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0817997938

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The first English-language book to present a complete picture of this intriguing East European borderland, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture, illuminates the perennial problems of identity politics and cultural change that the country has endured.


Migrating Memories

Migrating Memories

Author: James Koranyi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-12-16

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1009051563

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Romanian Germans, mainly from the Banat and Transylvania, have occupied a place at the very heart of major events in Europe in the twentieth century yet their history is largely unknown. This east-central European minority negotiated their standing in a difficult new European order after 1918, changing from uneasy supporters of Romania, to zealous Nazis, tepid Communists, and conciliatory Europeans. Migrating Memories is the first comprehensive study in English of Romanian Germans and follows their stories as they move across borders and between regimes, revealing a very European experience of migration, minorities, and memories in modern Europe. After 1945, Romanian Germans struggled to make sense of their lives during the Cold War at a time when the community began to fracture and fragment. The Revolutions of 1989 seemed to mark the end of the German community in Romania, but instead Romanian Germans repositioned themselves as transnational European bridge-builders, staking out new claims in a fast-changing world.


Class Cultures in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe

Class Cultures in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe

Author: Dražen Cepić

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-26

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0429840101

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This book investigates the extent to which social class has changed in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism. Based on extensive original research, the book discusses how ideas about class are viewed by both working class and middle class people. The book examines how such people’s social identities are shaped by various factors including economic success, culture and friendship networks. The present class situation in Eastern Europe is contrasted to what prevailed in Communist times, when societies were officially classless, but nevertheless had Communist party elites.