The state and its cultural politics played a pivotal role in building the Romanian nation. The first part of the course will analyze the difficulties of nation-building in modern Romania, with a special emphasis on the incapacity of Romanian liberalism to prevent the rise of extreme right wing politics. The second part will explore different images of Romanian national identity that art provided both during the communist regime and in the post-1989 decades, also in a comparative perspective with Hungary, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The course will include visits to galleries, architectural sites and neighborhoods in Bucharest and its surroundings. https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ocs/nationalism/

Instructors: Silvia Marton (silvia.marton@unibuc.ro) and Caterina Preda (caterina.preda@unibuc.ro), Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest

Silvia Marton

Monday, 27 March, 8.30-10.30

1. Historical background: 1821-1945. Milestones of state-building and nation-building. 

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts: Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History (Ohio State University Press, 1991) – chapter 3, section “Enlightenment and Nationalism”; chapters 4 and 5

Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Harvard University Press, 2016) – chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7

Tuesday, 28 March, 17.30-19.30

2. “Inventing Eastern Europe”. When East and West meet – mental and cultural maps, real and imagined geographies

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Text: Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford University Press, 1994 - – Introduction, chapters One and Four 

Wednesday, 29 March, 8.30-10.30

3. Nation-building and nationalizing politics and policies (I). The Romanian national narrative during the long 19th century 

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Text: Monika Baár, Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2010) – Introduction, chapters 2 and 3

Assignment: Visit of the National Gallery of The National Museum of Art of Romania (http://mnar.arts.ro/en/ )

Monday, April 3, 8.30-10.30

4.     Nation-building and nationalizing politics and policies (II). The revolutions of 1848 in Europe, Romania and Hungary. An iconographic turn. The politics of commemoration

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts: Rogers Brubaker and Margit Feischmidt, “1848 in 1998: The Politics of Commemoration in Hungary, Romania, andSlovakia”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Oct., 2002), pp. 700-744

Axel Körner (ed.), 1848 – A European Revolution? International Ideas and National Memoriesof 1848, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000 – Part I -Introduction

Tuesday, April 4, 17.30-19.30

5. The triumph of political nationalism in Eastern Europe

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Text: Vlad Georgescu, The Romanians: A History (Ohio State University Press, 1991) – chapter 5

Wednesday, April 5, 8.30-10.30

6.     Nation-building and exclusion. Antisemitism in Romania (1866-1940s). Extreme right-wing politics during the inter-war period

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts: Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building& Ethnic  Struggle, 1918-1930 (Cornell University Press, 1995) – Introduction; Part I, section 1; Part II, sections 6 and 7

Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Cornell University Press, 2015) – Introduction, chapters 1, 2 and 4

Assignment: Visit of the Muzeul de istorie al evreilor/Jewish History Museum in Romania (http://www.museum.jewishfed.ro/  ). Followed by a walk in the former Jewish neighborhood of Bucharest.

Final assignment for courses 1 to 6

Teamwork: small groups write a project together of 2.500 words. Choose an artistic depiction (painting, poster, artifact, cartoon) of the period 1820s to 1940s in Romania and discuss it in relation to the texts recommended during courses 1 to 6. The visits indicated as assignments – weeks 3 and 6 – should provide you the artistic depiction you wish to comment. You should include in your essays answers to the following main question: How do(es) the specific artwork(s) you have chosen conceptualize “the national” and the “political”?

Caterina Preda

Monday, April 10, 10.30-12.30

7. Historical background: 1945-2010. The establishment and functioning of the communist regime, the transition to democracy and the problems of post-communism and of the EU integration.

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts:

Dennis Deletant, Romania under communist rule (Center for Romanian Studies, 1999), especially Chapter 2, pp. 146-165 and Chapter 3, pp. 165-241.

Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for all seasons A political history of Romanian communism (University of California Press 2003), especially Chapter 6, pp. 168-186, and Chapter 7, pp. 187-232.

Lavinia Stan, “Romania” in Lavinia Stan (ed.), Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (Routledge: London & NY, 2009), pp. 128-151.

Wednesday, April 12, 10.30-12.30

8. National communism and the arts: Romania and the Central and Eastern European countries. Comparative overview of the artistic scenes in the countries of Eastern Europe

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts:

Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics inRomania (University of California Press, 1991), especially Chapter 2, pp. 72-97, Chapter 3, pp. 98-134, Chapter 5, pp. 169-204.

Caterina Preda, Art and Politics Under Modern Dictatorships A Comparison of Chile andRomania (Palgrave, 2017), especially Chapter 4, pp. 141-209.

Additional texts:

Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People’s Republic of China (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), especially the Introduction pp. ix-xv,Chapter 1, pp. 2-28, Chapter 3, pp.82-113,

Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, andBeyond (Princeton University Press, 1992), especially the Introduction, pp. 3-13, Chapter 1, pp. 14-32, Chapter 2, pp. 33-74.

Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe 1945-1989 (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2009), especially pp. 98-100, 114-116, 247, 255-262, 302-303, 382-387, 410, 422-426.

Thursday, April 13, 10.30-12.30

9. ‘Communism never happened’[1]: communism and its memories in Eastern and Central Europe. Remembering and forgetting communism: state, private, and artistic practices of remembrance and erasing the past.

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts:

Svetlana Boym, "Nostalgia and its discontents", The Hedgehog Review, 2007, pp. 6-18.

Maria Todorova, “Introduction: Similar Trajectories, Different Memories” in Remembering Communism Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in South-East Europe, eds. M. Todorova, A.Dimou, S. Troebst (Budapest, NY: CEU Press 2014), pp. 1-28.

Monday, April 24, 10.30-12.30

10. The sites of cultural memory: the curated memory of Nicolae Ceaușescu

Site: The Palace of Ceaușescu, Bvd. Primăverii, no. 50

Texts: Caterina Preda, “The Digital (Artistic) Memory of Nicolae Ceausescu” in Memory. Conflict and New Media Web Wars in post-socialist states, edited by Ellen Rutten, Julie Fedor, and Vera Zvereva (Routledge 2013), pp. 197-214.

Alina Asavei, “Nicolae Ceaușescu: between Vernacular Memory and Nostalgia”, in Gavin Bowd (ed. Special issue, ”Memory and Nostalgia”, Twentieth Century Communism: A Journal of International History) Issue 11, 2016: 27-42.

Assignment: Visit The House of Ceaușescu.

Thursday, April 27, 10.30-12.30

11. Art and the politics of memory in post-communist Romania: memory, nationalism and EU integration

Site: FSP, Spiru Haret no. 8

Texts:

Anca Pușcă, “The ‘aesthetics of violence’: Roma/Gypsies visibility and there-partitioning of the sensible” in Post-Communist Aesthetics (Routledge: London, NY, 2016), pp. 113-138.

Caterina Preda, “’Project 1990’ as an anti-monument in Bucharest and theaestheticisation of memory”, Südosteuropa 64 (2016): 307-324.

Oana Popescu Sandu, “’Let’s all freeze up until 2100 or so’: Nostalgic Directions inPost-communist Romania” in Post-communist Nostalgia edited by Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille (New York: Berghan Books, 2010), 113-125.

Ciprian Mureșan, Communism never happened (2006)

Friday, April 28, 10.30-12.30

12.  Artistic remembrance of communism in Romania. The House of the people and post-communism: Ion Grigorescu’s dialogues with Nicolae Ceaușescu (1978 & 2007).

Final meeting of this course

Site: MNAC & the Palace of Parliament str. Izvor 2-4, Palatul Parlamentului

Visit of the Palace of Parliament and/or of the Museum of Contemporary Art after having viewed the two actions by Ion Grigorescu. After the visit, a discussion about Grigorescu’s practice, and about his role in questioning the monolithic perspective on the Ceaușescu regime.

Texts:

Mihaela Mihai, “Democratic ‘Sacred Spaces’: Public Architecture and TransitionalJustice” in Theorizing Transitional Justice, eds. Nir Eisikovitz & Claudio Corradetti (Ashgate 2014), 167-184.

Andreea Mihalache, “Re-inventing the center: Urban Memory, Political Travel, and thePalace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania” in Landscapes of Mobility Culture, Politics and Placemaking, eds. Arijit Sen & Jennifer Johung (Surrey: Ashgate 2013), 105-132.

Vlad Nancă, Catedrala Mânturii neamului (2003)

Final assignment (courses 7 to 12)

Team work: small groups write a project together of 2.500 words. Choose an artistic depiction (painting, novel, film, etc.) of the socialist or post-socialist times in Romania or Eastern Europe and discuss it in relation to the texts recommended during courses 7 to 12. How do(es) the specific artwork(s) chosen conceptualize “the national”, or the “political”? Be creative: you can make a short film, do interviews, discuss a theater play or a film, a band or a visual art piece.

[1] The title of an artwork by Ciprian Mureșan (2006).