Titlu proiect / Project Title: Dinamici intergenerationale ale vulnerabilitatii in naratiuni despre trauma din Statele Unite / Intergenerational Dynamics of Vulnerability in American Trauma Narratives (PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0051; no. 173)
Sursa de finantare / Financing: UEFISCDI, prin programul national de cercetare, PN-II-RU-TE, competitia Tinere Echipe din anul 2014 / National Council for Scientific Research – PN-II-RU-TE Programme, 2014 annual competition.
Durata proiectului / Project Duration: 2 ani (1 octombrie 2015 – 30 septembrie 2017) / 2 years (1 October 2015 – 30 September 2017).
Membrii proiectului / Project Members:
Conf. dr. Dana Mihailescu – project coordinator
Conf. dr. Roxana Oltean
Conf. dr. Mihaela Precup
Asist. drd. Dragos Manea
Drd. Ana-Maria Gavrila
Descrierea proiectului:
Acest proiect exploreaza evolutia si modificarile formelor vulnerabilitatii pentru o gama diversa de comunitati din America de-a lungul timpului ca urmare a multiplelor forme de raportare a diverselor generatii la precaritatea propriei existente in contextul normelor americane dominante si normelor altor grupuri, dar si in contextul asteptarilor din cadrul propriei comunitati, luand in considerare si impactul genului, varstei, structurii familiale asupra formelor specifice de deposedare. In acest scop, corpusul analizat va fi constituit din naratiuni literare, seriale TV, filme, testimonii orale si naratiuni trans-media. Vom investiga in ce masura orizontul intergenerational de structurare a naratiunilor reprezinta punctul de plecare pentru o prezentare dinamica a vulnerabilitatii in naratiunile despre trauma din SUA de la sfarsitul secolului 19 pana in prezent, aducand in prim plan o serie de nuante, complicitati, solidaritati si suprapunerea atasamentelor filiale si afiliative. Vom considera in special o problematica putin studiata in domeniu, i.e. raportarea generatiilor diverse la precaritatea propriei generatii dar si la cea a generatiilor anterioare si vom evidentia puncte de intersectionalitate, interdependenta si transfer ale unor temeri similare sau noi determinate de viziuni si perspective istorice si culturale diferite dar si de propensitatea mai mare sau mai mica a diverselor persoane de a fi expuse ca vulnerabile in functie de varsta, gen, structura familiala.
Project description:
This project explores the evolution and shifts of the facets of vulnerability for a diverse range of American communities over time as a result of various generations’ engagement with the precariousness of their existence in relation to mainstream American norms and other groups’ norms but also with expectations inside their community and in view of the input of gender, age, family structure for specific forms of dispossession. To that end, our corpus will be represented by various media ranging from literature, TV series, films, to oral testimonies and transmedia narratives. We will investigate the degree to which the intergenerational scope of structuring narratives represents the basis for a dynamic rendering of vulnerability in American trauma narratives from the late 19th century until the present, implying many nuances, complicities, solidarities, and the mutual imbrication of filial and affiliative attachments. We will particularly consider an under-researched topic in this field, i.e. various generations' engagement with the precariousness of their own generation but also that of previous generations, highlighting the intersectionality, interdependence and transference of kindred and new concerns brought by different historical and cultural angles and perspectives as well as by the propensity of higher or lower exposure to frailty depending on one's age, gender, or family structure.
2017
Publicatii / Publications
Carte acceptata spre publicare / Book accepted for publication
• Dana Mihailescu, Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890-1930: Struggles for Recognition.Lexington Studies in Modern Jewish History, Historiography, and Memory. Lexington Books / An Imprint of Rowman and Littlefield, June 2018. Link to publisher's website here.
Articole acceptate spre publicare in volume internationale / Articles accepted for publication in international volumes:
• Roxana Oltean, “No Protection at Home,” “No Resting Place Abroad.” Vulnerable Subjects and (Trans)National Contexts in Frederick Douglass’s Life Writing.” National and Transnational Challenges to the American Imaginary, eds. Adina Ciugureanu, Eduard Vlad, Nicoleta Stanca. Bern: Peter Lang, 2018. 53-67.
• Dana Mihailescu, “Ghost-Writing World War II Memories. Romanian Holocaust Survivors’ Life Stories in Post-Cold War Western Societies.” After Memory. World War II in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures. Eds. Matthias Schwartz, Nina Weller, and Heike Winkel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (“Media and Cultural Memory” series), 2021, pp. 83-110. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110713831-005; https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110713831/html.
Articol acceptat in revista international BDI / Article accepted for publication in international database-indexed journal:
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “Holocaust Representation and Graphic Strangeness in Art Spiegelman’s Maus. A Survivor’s Tale: ‘Funny Animals,’ Constellations and Traumatic Memory.” Acta Universitatis Sapientsiae 9.3 (2017). ISSN 2068-2956 (online version). ISSN 2067-5151 (printed version). ISSN-L 2067-5151. DeGruyter Open. http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-comm/C4/comm4-03.pdf
Articole publicate in volume internationale / Articles in international volumes:
• Dana Mihailescu, “Shadows of Memory and Intergenerational Legacies in Child Survivors’ Testimonies from the Kestenberg Archive.” Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive. Eds. Eva Fogelman, Sharon Kangisser Cohen and Dalia Ofer. New York: Berghahn Press, 2017. 122-149. ISBN 978-1-78533-438-2 (hardback) / ISBN 978-1-78533-439-9 (ebook). http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=FogelmanChildren.
• Mihaela Precup, Dragos Manea. “Bad Girls from Outer Space: Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’s Saga and the Graphic Representation of Subversive Femininity” in Julie A. Chappell and Mallory Young (eds.). Bad Girls and Transgressive Women in Contemporary Television, Fiction, and Film. Ed. Julie A. Chappell and Mallory Young. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 253-282. ISBN: 978-3-319-47258-4; ISBN: 978-3-319-47259-1 (e-book). http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319472584.
Articole publicate in reviste BDI / Articles published in International Databases-Indexed journals:
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Therapeutic Dreamscape: Blending History, Memory, and Symbolism in The Dance of Reality.” Acta Universitatis Sapientsiae 8.1 (2016). ISSN 2068-2956 (online version). ISSN 2067-5151 (printed version). ISSN-L 2067-5151. DeGruyter Open (published in 2017). http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-philo/C8-1/philo81-11.pdf [Databases: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ausp]
Stagii de cercetare / Research stays
• Dragos Manea, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universitat Berlin, 29 March – 5 April 2017
• Dana Mihailescu, The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, Israel, 8-15 May 2017
• Dana Mihailescu, The Humanities Library of Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt,Germany, 2-15 June 2017
• Roxana Oltean, Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, London, 8 – 15 August 2017
• Roxana Oltean, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universitat Berlin, 19 August – 1 September 2017
• Dana Mihailescu, Uppsala University Library, Uppsala, Suedia, 21 august – 7 septembrie 2017
Conferinte / Conferences
• Dragos Manea, “The Ethics of Historical Fantasy: Collective Memory and Transgression in The Manhattan Projects (2012-) and Über (2013-),” Comics and Memory Conference, Gent, 18-21 April 2017, http://www.cmsi.ugent.be/comics-and-memory-conference-programme/
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “Holocaust Representation and Graphic Strangeness in Art Spiegelman’s Maus. A Survivor’s Story”, Conference on The Stranger, Sapientia University of Miercurea Ciuc, Romania, 20-22 April 2017, http://csik.sapientia.ro/en/news/idegen-strainul-stranger
• Mihaela Precup, ‘Emasculated by the Diaper Bag’: Middle Age and the Vulnerability of the Paternal Body in Joe Ollmann’s Mid-Life (2011) Birth, Death, Rebirth. The 19th Annual International Conference of the English Department, University of Bucharest, 9 iunie 2017, http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “Animation and Drama-Documentary in American Splendor”, Animation and Memory International Conference at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 21-24 June 2017. http://www.ru.nl/animationandmemory/program/
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “American Splendor: Blending Life, Comic Art, and Film”, The International Conference of Graphic Novels, Bandes Dessinées and Comics 2017, Dundee, Scotland, 25 June- 1 July 2017, http://internationalgraphicnovelandcomicsconference.com/programme-3/
• Dana Mihailescu, “The Agency of Memories about World War II across Time and Media: On Ruth Glasberg Gold’s Multiple Accounts of Holocaust Experiences.” Seminar “Searching for the Agency of Memory” (organizers: Codruta Pohrib, Maria Zirra) at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 5-10 July 2017, https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting/meeting-schedule/program-guide#/calendar/1.
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “‘Funny Animals’ And Constellations: History, Traumatic Memory, And Graphic Representation in Maus”, The European Conference on Arts & Humanities (ECAH2017), Brighton, United Kingdom, 10-13 July 2017, https://ecah.iafor.org/programme
• Dana Mihailescu, “Mnemonic Vulnerabilities and Intergenerational Dynamics in Child Survivors’ Testimonies from the Kestenberg Archive”, Interpreting Archives: 4th Annual Conference of the British Association of Holocaust Studies,Sheffield, UK, 24-28 July 2017.
2016
Publicatii / Publications
Articole publicate in reviste ISI-AHCI / Articles published in ISI-AHCI journals:
• Dana Mihailescu, “Transnational conundrums around trips by young people to Holocaust death camps: Ethical potentialities of incongruous memories in Thomas Duranteau’s travelogue Des miettes et des étoiles (2012).” French Cultural Studies 27.4 (November 2016): 348-360. Impact Factor: 0.143. eISSN: 17402352| ISSN: 09571558. DOI: 10.1177/0957155816660678. http://frc.sagepub.com/content/27/4/348.full.pdf+html.
• Dana Mihailescu, “Specifics of Holocaust Child Survivors’ Memoirs as Reflected in Appelfeld’s The Story of a Life.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Special Issue on War and Life Writing. Guest editors Louise O. Vasvári and I-Chun Wang. 17.3 (September 2015, published in May 2016). Purdue University Press. ISSN: 1481-4374.http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2711&context=clcweb.
http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2711.
Articole publicate in reviste BDI / Articles published in International Databases-Indexed journals:
• Dana Mihailescu, “A Bundle of Confessions in Jewish Women’s Comics: Reconstructing Eastern European Jewish American Life in Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief.” Studies in Comics. Special issue on Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. Guest editors Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman. 6.2 (December 2015 - published in January 2016): 271-290. ISSN 2040-3232, Online ISSN: 2040-3240 [ERIH-PLUS journal indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database]. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/stic/2015/00000006/00000002/art00006.
Articole publicate in volume internationale (volum indexat ISI-AHCI in Web of Science) / Articles in international volumes:
• Dragos Manea, “'The Coming Superman': Israel Zangwill’s The Melting Pot and American Nationalism.” 12thConference on British and American Studies: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Construction of Meaning. Eds. Marinela Burada, Oana Tatu and Raluca Sinu. Newcastle upon Thyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. 237-249. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8587-8; ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8587-4
Articole in volume de autor sau editate
• Roxana Oltean, “Slaves,” “Freedoms,” “Peace.” American Narratives of (In)Vulnerability in Sol Stein’s 1952-1953 VOA scripts.” Transatlantic Vistas. Patterns of Perception, U.S.-Eastern European Relations and Cold War Radio Broadcasting Beyond the Iron Curtain. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2016. 55-114. ISBN 978-606-16-0740-2.
• Roxana Oltean,“Scenes of American Vulnerability and the “National Subconscious.” Cold War Radio Battles in the U.S.” Transatlantic Vistas. Patterns of Perception, U.S.-Eastern European Relations and Cold War Radio Broadcasting Beyond the Iron Curtain. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2016. 173-205. ISBN 978-606-16-0740-2.
• Roxana Oltean, “Staging Cold War American Vulnerability Through the Foreign Committee Hearings, 1971-1972.” Transatlantic Vistas. Patterns of Perception, U.S.-Eastern European Relations and Cold War Radio Broadcasting Beyond the Iron Curtain. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2016. 206-268. ISBN 978-606-16-0740-2.
• Dragos Manea, “‘If the accident will’: the conventionality of chaos in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.” Ordine si chaos. coord. Theodor Georgescu, Ioana Munteanu. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2016. 159-164. ISBN 978-606-16-0724-2.
Recenzii publicate in reviste BDI / Book reviews published in International Databases-Indexed journals:
• Dana Mihailescu, “Review of Out of Chaos. Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust. Edited by Elaine Saphier Fox. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2013. ” Jewish Culture and History 17.1-2 (2016): 175-178. ISSN: 1462-169X (Print), 2167-9428 (Online). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1462169X.2016.1140943. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RF5y2EwBDZJZ3kdIeVgv/full.
Stagii de cercetare / Research stays
• Dragos Manea, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universitat, Berlin, 29 July - 29 August 2016
• Roxana Oltean, Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, London, 4 September-10 September 2016
Participare conferinte / Conference participation
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, “Showing the Voice of the Body: Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow: The Figure as a Visual Representation of Trauma, and the Narrative of Hope" New Treatments of the Figure in Literature and Visual Arts. International Conference, CESI, University of Bucharest, 11-12 November 2016,http://figura.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Figura_Program_DEF.pdf
• Mihaela Precup, “(Auto)biographical Tropes in the Paternal Graphic Memoir”, Comics Forum 2016. Genre: A Conference on Comics, 2-6 noiembrie 2016, Leeds Central Library, Leeds, UK.
https://comicsforum.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/programme-2016.pdf
• Dana Mihailescu, “The Festering Consciousness of an SS Medical Doctor: Representations of Johann Paul Kremer’s Diary in Thomas Duranteau’s Des miettes et des étoiles (2012).” Representing Perpetrators of Mass Violence, Utrecht, Netherlands, 31 August-4 September 2016. https://perpetratorstudies.sites.uu.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/48/2016/06/Representing-Perpetrators-Conference-Program-1.pdf
• Dana Mihailescu, “Palimpsestic History as Confession in Jewish Women’s Comics: Reconstructing Eastern European Jewish American Life in Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief.” 2016 MESEA Conference Cultural Palimpsests: Ethnic Watermarks, Surfacing Histories, Warsaw, 21-25 June 2016. http://mesea.org/files/MESEA_2016_program.pdf.
• Mihaela Precup, “A Widow Shall: Joyce Carol Oates‘s A Widow’s Story (2011) and the Public Performance of Mourning,” 2016 EAAS Conference, Constanta, Romania, 22-25 April 2016. eaas2016.org/conference-program
• Dragos Manea, “Leonardo‘s Straightwashing; Da Vinci‘s Demons (Starz, 2013--) and the Struggle for a Queer Cultural Memory,” 2016 EAAS Conference, Constanta, Romania, 22-25 April 2016. eaas2016.org/conference-program
• Ana-Maria Gavrila, "Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Therapeutic Dreamscape: Blending History, Memory, and Symbolism in The Dance of Reality." Discourse, Culture and Representation II International Conference organized by the Department of Humanities at Sapientia University in collaboration with the American Hungarian Educators Association (AHEA), Miercurea Ciuc, 15-16 April 2016, ghtk.csik.sapientia.ro/en/news/discourse-culture-and-representation-ii-international-conference
• Dana Mihailescu, “Shifts in Testimony Focus depending on Medium and Temporal Context: On Ruth Glasberg Gold’s Holocaust Experiences in Transnistria.” Bearing Witness More Than Once Conference, Berlin, 14-16 March 2016. http://www.zentrum-juedische-studien.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Flyer_Bearing_Witness_More_Than_Once_kl.pdf
CFP Remembering the (Post)Communist City. Vulnerable Sites of Intergenerational Traumatic Memories in Transatlantic Perspective (workshop for ACED-18, the 18th Annual Conference of the English Department, University of Bucharest, 2-4 June 2016; link to conference program)
This workshop welcomes papers that explore the connection between remembering and representing (post)communist cities in transatlantic perspective.
Workshop conveners: Dana Mihailescu, Roxana Oltean, Mihaela Precup (University of Bucharest) (workshop organized as part of PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0051 project Intergenerational Dynamics of Vulnerability in American Trauma Narratives, project no. 173/2015 funded by UEFISCDI)
Chair: Andaluna Borcila
Respondent: Mihaela Precup , U. of Bucharest
Dana Mihailescu, U. of Bucharest: Images of Childhood from 1950s Communist Bucharest in Memoirs by Women Émigrées Authors to the United States
Roxana Oltean, U. of Bucharest: Sites of Vulnerability and Return in the Communist City
Andaluna Borcila, James Madison College/Michigan State University:Romanian Cities as Sites of Revolution: Televisibility, Remembering, and Touring Communism
The connection between memory and the city has been most famously explored by Pierre Nora’s collection Lieux de mémoire/Realms of Memory (1984, 1989), where he diagnosed the death of “authentic memory” and its replacement in the urban space with sites such as memorials, museums, and other visual representations that, together with various commemoration practices, regulate national life frames (Judith Butler). Additionally, Andreas Huyssen’s Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford University Press, 2003) emphasized the high stakes of urban spaces and media as material palimpsests offering “traces of the historical past in the present.” More recently, identifying specific coordinates of the connection between memory and the (post)communist city in contemporary societies has been an increasing focus of international scholarship and public attention. The topic has been competently broached in Augusta Dimou, Maria Todorova, and Stefan Troebst’s edited volume Remembering Communism. Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe (CEU Press, 2014), which records the dynamic processes of memory practices that mirror ongoing developments of private and public memories and identities in Southeast Europe by concentrating on the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to Poland and the GDR. Memory and Political Change, a collection of essays edited by Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt (Palgrave 2012) examines mediated representations of the past during transitional historical periods. The significance of considering (post)communist sites in transatlantic perspective has gained momentum especially thanks to Andaluna Borcila’s American Representations of Post-Communism: Television, Travel Sites, and Post-Cold War Narratives (Routledge, 2014), which explores American ways of mapping the disintegration of communism and U.S. narratives articulated around post-communist sites and subjects in television news broadcasts, travel guides, and return narratives by East European immigrants to the US.
Our workshop means to contribute to this ongoing conversation by exploring the innovative insights cultural studies scholars can gain from considering (post)communist sites in connection to intergenerational (traumatic) memories in transatlantic perspective.
We particularly welcome proposals addressing the following significant loose ends in need of scholarly attention (applied to literature, film, popular culture, visual culture, media etc.):
the relationship between remembering and representing (post)communist cities;
the transmission of memory and historical knowledge;
the impact of vulnerability, generationality, and various media on the production and consumption of (post)communist city memories.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words, together with a biographical background of 50-100 words by February 15, 2016 to Dana Mihailescu (dmihailes@yahoo.com).
2015
Publicatii / Publications
Carti / Books
• Dana Mihailescu, Regimes of Vulnerability in Jewish American Media and Literature. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2015. ISBN 978-606-16-0551-4. 293 pages. http://editura-unibuc.ro/produs/regimes-of-vulnerability-in-jewish-american-media-and-literature/.
Articole acceptate spre publicare in reviste BDI / Forthcoming articles accepted for publication in International Databases-Indexed journals:
• Dana Mihailescu, “A Bundle of Confessions in Jewish Women’s Comics: Reconstructing Eastern European Jewish American Life in Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief.” Studies in Comics. Special issue on Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. Guest editors Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman. 6.2 (2015): 271-290. ISSN 2040-3232, Online ISSN: 2040-3240. ERIH-PLUS Journal. To be published in December 2015 or January 2016. http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=168/.
Articole acceptate spre publicare in reviste ISI-AHCI / Forthcoming articles accepted for publication in ISI-AHCI journals:
• Dana Mihailescu, "Specifics of Holocaust Child Survivors’ Memoirs as Reflected in Appelfeld’s The Story of a Life." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Special Issue on War and Life Writing. Guest editors Louise O. Vasvári and I-Chun Wang. 17.3 (2015, forthcoming). To be published in December 2015 or January 2016. Purdue University Press. ISSN: 1481-4374. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/recent_volumes.html.
Participare conferinte / Conference participation
Dana Mihailescu, “The Thrusts of Ghost-Writing Eastern European Survivors’ Memories of the Holocaust in Post-Cold War Western Societies. On Sara Tuvel Bernstein’s The Seamstress and Leah Kaufman’s Live! Remember! Tell the World!.”After Memory: Conflicting Claims to World War Two in Contemporary Eastern European Literatures Conference, Berlin, 6-8 November 2015. http://www.zfl-berlin.org/veranstaltungen-detail/items/after-memory-conflicting-claims-to-world-war-two-in-contemporary.html.
Serie prelegeri in cadrul proiectului / Series of lectures for early career researchers within our project
Dynamics of Vulnerability and Traumatic Affect Lecture Series
Academic scientific research report 2016
Academic scientific research report 2015