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Interviews “45 for 45”
Each week, an interview is published as part of the 45 for 45 series, which will run throughout 2018 to mark the 45th anniversary of the Society for Romanian Studies as well as the 100th anniversary of the formation of modern Romania. You might want to check the latest interviews, available at: https://srstudies.org/activities-programs/45-for-45/.
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The Society for Romanian Studies
Announces:
The Fourth Biennial SRS Book Prize
The committee agreed unanimously to award the prize to Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Cornell UP, 2015). Clark’s book offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the interwar Legionary movement from the perspective of the history of everyday social life. Moving away from abstract paradigms of ‘the nature of Romanian fascism’, Clark tells us more about what the Legionaries actually did (and did not) do, using a large number of new archival sources. His book covers the career of the movement from beginning to end and treats a remarkable range of topics, with a good structure, contextualization, regional coverage, and comparison with other fascist movements. Especially impressive is the way Clark situates interwar Romanian political phenomena in the context of broader paradigms of international social, cultural, political and religious history; and brings the topic up to date with a closing reflection on the memory of Legionary activity in post-war and present-day Romanian society. For the breadth and depth of its analysis, its rich documentation and clear writing style, Clark’s work stands out against a very strong field.
There were also three important Honorable Mentions:
Virginia Hill and Gabriela Alboiu, Verb Movement and Clause Structure in Old Romanian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) show that although early Romanian texts display predominantly Latin and Romance morphology patterns, they also signal a strong manifestation of the Balkan Sprachbund where syntax is concerned. These findings help us to understand more clearly the linguistic processes that paved the way for the emergence of modern Romanian.
Dennis Deletant, British Clandestine Activities in Romania During the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) contains priceless and rare information concerning Britain’s wartime role in Romania, that by its nature is hard to access. Deletant not only clarifies the documentary record of a contested story but offers careful and calibrated assessments of the ultimate impact of British activities, as well as providing insights from Romanian archives that have not hitherto been available to British researchers.
Ştefan Ionescu, Jewish Resistance to Romanianization (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) greatly enriches our understanding of Jewish resistance to the Antonescu regime during the Second World War. Focusing on the Jewish community of Bucharest, Ionescu defines his topic as ‘an asynchronic duel fought with legal weapons in an asymmetric warfare’. His fine analysis, based on extensive archival research, adds to our knowledge both of the Jewish community’s plight and activities, and of their impact on the social and political history of wartime Romania as a whole.
SRS Book Prize Committee Members:
| Alex Drace-Francis
European Studies Department University of Amsterdam Kloveniersburgwal 48 AMSTERDAM 1012CX Netherlands |
Peter Gross
10025 Casa Real Cove Knoxville, TN 37922 USA |
Inessa Medzhibovskaya Eugene Lang College
The New School 65 West 11th Street New York, NY 10011 USA |
About the SRS Book Prize:
For details of the Prize and past winners please see: https://srstudies.org/2016/06/18/awards-prizes/
Prizes
SRS awards three prizes: the annual Graduate Student Essay Prize, the biennial Book Award, and the biennial Keith Hitchins Dissertation Prize.
Current calls
(no current calls)
Winners
Winner:
Adelina Ștefan, Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco’s Spain (Cornell University Press, 2024).
Honourable Mentions:
Andrei Gorzo and Veronica Lazăr, Beyond the New Romanian Cinema: Romanian Culture, History, and the Films of Radu Jude (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Press, 2023)
Iemima Ploscariu, Alternative Evangelicals: Challenging Nationalism in Interwar Romania’s Multi-Ethnic Borderlands (Brill, 2024).
Cristina Vățulescu, Reading the Archival Revolution: Declassified Stories and Their Challenges (Stanford University Press, 2024).
2025 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Bogdan Vișan, MA, Faculty of Letters at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași, Romania
2024 Keith Hitchins Dissertation prize
Co-winners: Keith Harrington (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and George Andrei (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA).
2024 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Miruna Chirila, MA, University College London
Winner:
Svetlana Suveică, Post-Imperial Encounters: Transnational Designs of Bessarabia in Paris and Elsewhere 1917-1922 (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022).
Honourable Mentions:
Constanța Vintilă, Changing Subjects, Moving Objects: Status, Mobility, and Social Transformation in Southeastern Europe, 1700-1850 (Brill Schöningh 2022).
Grant T. Harward’s Romania’s Holy War: Soldiers, Motivation, and the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2021).
2023 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Ecaterina Vlad, MA, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Honorable Mention: Emőke Gondos, MA, Central European University
2022 Keith Hitchins Dissertation Prize
Co-winners: Cosmin Koszor-Codrea (Oxford Brookes University) and Rucsandra Pop (Bucharest University)
2022 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Leah Valtin-Erwin (Indiana University Bloomington)
Honorable Mention: Irina Nicorici (Rutgers University)
Winner: Roxana-Talida Roman, The Edge of Europe – Heritage, Landscape and Conflict Archaeology: First World War Material Culture in Romanian Conflictual Landscapes (Oxford: Bar Publishing, 2020).
Honorable Mentions: Péter Berta, Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), and Călin Cotoi, Inventing the Social in Romania, 1848–1914: Networks and Laboratories of Knowledge (Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2020).
2021 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Alexandra Ciocănel (University of Manchester)
Honorable Mention: Iemima Ploscariu (Dublin City University)
2020 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Cosmin Koszor Codrea (Oxford Brookes University)
Honorable Mention: Cosmin Tudor Minea (University of Birmingham)
Winner: Bruce O’Neill, The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order (Duke University Press, 2017).
Honorable Mention: Irina Marin, Peasant Violence and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
2019 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Adela Hîncu (Central European University)
Honorable Mention: Elena Radu
2018 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Alexandra Chiriac (University of St. Andrews)
Honorable Mentions: Nicoleta Simonia Minciu, Iemima Ploscariu (Dublin City University), and Matthew Signer (Stanford University)
Winner: Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Cornell University Press, 2015).
Honorable Mentions: Virginia Hill and Gabriela Alboiu, Verb Movement and Clause Structure in Old Romanian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), Dennis Deletant, British Clandestine Activities in Romania During the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and Ştefan Ionescu, Jewish Resistance to Romanianization (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
2017 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Dana Mureşan (University of Amsterdam)
Special Mentions: Kathryn Grow Allen (University of Buffalo), Alin Rus (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Karin Steinbrueck (Northwestern University)
2016 Graduate Student Essay Prize
No prize awarded.
Winner: Sean Cotter, Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor Romania (Rochester, 2014).
Honorable Mention: Moshe Idel, Mircea Eliade: From Magic to Myth (Peter Lang, 2013).
2015 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Matei Costinescu (University of Bucharest)
Honorable Mentions: Madalina Vereş (University of Pittsburgh) and Zsuzsanna Magdo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
2014 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Roxana Cazan (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Winner: Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery, Peasants under Siege: the Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962 (Princeton University Press, 2011).
2013 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Florin Poenaru (Central European University)
2012 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Jonathan Stillo (City University of New York)
Winner: Tom Gallagher, Romania and the European Union: How the Weak Vanquished the Strong (Manchester University Press, 2009)
2011 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Cristina Onose (University of Toronto)
2010 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Anca Mandru (University of Illinois)
2009 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Winner: Roland Clark (University of Pittsburgh)
Mentoring Program
The Society for Romanian Studies is launching a new mentoring program that pairs scholars at different stages of their careers or in different parts of the world to facilitate mutually beneficial discussions and communication. Junior scholars gain local information formally from their supervisors and informally from others they come into contact with. Informal mentorship is particularly important for students and scholars working in the West whose primary supervisors are not themselves specialists in Romania and Moldova. Similarly, students and scholars based in Eastern Europe will find it beneficial to establish informal relationships with their colleagues abroad, with whom they can discuss disciplinary trends and other questions of mutual interest. Mentoring also benefits senior scholars by helping them stay abreast of new literatures and trends in the field as well as providing insights into other universities and other countries.
The purpose of the SRS Mentoring Program is to provide SRS members with invaluable support and established scholars the opportunity to help shape the future of the field and support new research. Responsibility for making the mentoring relationship work rests with the individual mentor/mentee, but the SRS acts as a sponsoring organization that matches mentors and mentees and suggests parameters for the relationship. The SRS aims at facilitating formal mentoring initiatives in cases where mentors and mentees do not know each other, have no clear understanding of their current expertise areas, and need help to connect.
Mentoring relationships may either be established around specific, short-term goals, such as writing a book proposal or developing strategies for acceptance into graduate schools, or may involve a series of discussions career trajectories, publication plans, accessing libraries, archives, or fellowships, or other issues of mutual interest to the mentor and mentee. Individual pairs should agree on the nature and longevity of the commitment, but we envisage that most mentoring relationships will involve several informal conversations over a period of six months.
If you are willing to consider becoming a mentor, could you please fill out a short form here. Your bio (but not your contact details) will then be available online for potential mentees.
For further details please contact Roland Clark (clarkr@liv.ac.uk) or any of the other members of the Mentoring Committee:
Margaret Beissinger (mhbeissi@princeton.edu)
Petru Negură (petru.negura@gmail.com)
Robert Ives (rives@unr.edu)
Cristina Plămădeală (montrealcp@gmail.com)
Anca Şincan (anca.sincan@gmail.com)
SRS Newsletter
The Society for Romanian Studies publishes a regular, semi-annual, newsletter to keep its members and associates informed of goings on in the field. The newsletter is distributed in electronic form only. Subscribers to H-Romania and our Facebook friends are notified once a new issue is published, usually in November and April each year.
Please send news of your publications, moves, graduations, advancement, conferences, and life events to the Newsletter editorial team:
- Bridget G. Kelly-Vincz, PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA (bgkv@umich.edu)
- Ioana-Alexandra Niculae, PhD candidate in History at the University of Liverpool, UK (ioana.alexandra.niculae@liverpool.ac.uk)
- Alex Minovici, PhD candidate in History at Indiana University Bloomington, USA (aminovi@iu.edu)
To read current and past issues of the SRS Newsletter in PDF format, please click on the links below:
Conferences
SRS is committed to organizing thematic international conferences in Europe every 3 years. See the links before for information on past and future conferences.
What we do
The Society for Romanian Studies is involved in a variety of activities and programs, and you can too. We offer two prizes, publish a book series in collaboration with Polirom as well as the Journal of Romanian Studies in collaboration with Ibidem Press, maintain a mentorship program, distribute our biannual Newsletter, maintain links with a number of other scholarly organizations, and organize an international conference in Romania every three years. The Society celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2018, a momentous event we marked with the “45 for 45” interviews series published in the acclaimed LaPunkt.
Please choose one of the links below to find out more!
SRS 2017 Graduate Student Essay Prize
Committee:
R. Chris Davis
(Lone Star College-Kingwood),
Valentina Glajar
(Texas State University),
Ron King
(San Diego State University),
Diane Vancea
(Ovidius University of Constanta)
The Ninth Annual SRS Graduate Student Essay Prize is awarded to the most outstanding unpublished essay or thesis chapter written in English by a graduate student in any social science or humanities discipline on a Romanian subject during the long academic year 2016–17. The prize committee received over twenty essays from a wide range of disciplines, submitted by graduate students and recent graduates from across North America, Europe, and Asia. The committee debated the merits of many prize-worthy essays. In the end, one essay stood above the others. It is with great pleasure that the committee awards this year’s Graduate Student Essay Prize to Dana Muresan for her essay “Brancusi: The Construction of a Romanian National Hero.”
Muresan’s well-researched and highly sophisticated essay examines through the lens of Brancusi the complex relationship of art and nationalism. It explores the role of Romania in the formation of Brancusi’s universal modern art and, in turn, the role of Brancusi and his art in the formation of Romanian identity and promotion of national culture. In particular, Muresan addresses the value the Romanian state derived from claiming Bransuci as a national hero, as a cultural symbol combining historic identity and contemporary sophistication. Yet this appropriation explicitly could not include full appreciation for the content of the work, given that Brancusi the émigré was producing art that was distinctly non-socialist in theme and format. The paper beautifully explores this contradiction, especially as it played out in official Romanian artistic discourse, highlighting both statements and silences of that official discourse. All at once, Muresan reflects on the legacy of Brancusi’s biography and art in both Romania and Paris; widens the analytical frame of Romanian identity discourses; and makes a significant contribution to an array of scholarly fields, including nationalism studies, identity studies, and art history, among others. Equally important to the committee, the essay showcases the field of Romanian Studies in an international context. Finally, Muresan achieves something very rare in academic writing these days, namely the ability to communicate ideas to specialists and non-specialists alike.
The committee felt three other finalists from this year’s competition deserved special mention: Kathryn Grow Allen’s “Migration, Conversion and the Creation of an Identity in Southeast Europe: A Biological Distance and Strontium Isotope Analysis of Ottoman Communities in Romania, Hungary and Croatia”; Alin Rus’s “‘Building’ Cultural Patrimony in Ceaușescu’s Neopatrimonial Romania”; and Karin Steinbrueck’s “Aftershocks: Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Romanian Communist Regime’s Responses to the 1977 Earthquake.” The quality and diversity of this year’s submissions certainly bodes well for the future of Romanian studies.