Romanian Studies Association of America

Our Curriculum Vitae

THE ROMANIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

HISTORY:

 

1972-1975

The Romanian Studies Association of America (RSAA) began as a seminar on Romanian language and literature at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) held in New York in 1972. The next year, in Chicago, the By-Laws of the Romanian Studies Association of America were approved and the organization became an affiliate organization of the MLA. Its main purpose is to promote scholarship and creative work pertinent to Romanian Studies on the American continent, particularly in the United States and Canada, as well as to encourage Romanian Studies research in comparative contexts of European and Global Studies.

 

Each year since its inception as an international and interdisciplinary organization, RSAA has organized two sessions at the annual MLA convention. Since 1975, the Romanian Studies Forum (Formerly Romanian Studies Discussion Group), an organization affiliated with MLA, also organizes one MLA session annually, collaborating closely with the RSAA.

 

1975-2014

The RSAA has approximately 70 members (active, honorary, and life members). The RSAA membership is open to any MLA member in good standing interested in Romanian Studies. In addition, newly approved RSAA Membership regulations allow free membership for international scholars and graduate students as indicated in our new Membership page.

 

2014-present

The Romanian Studies Association of America’s Newsletter, a publication that functioned since the beginning of the association will turn this academic year (2016/2017) into the Journal of Romanian Studies Association of America, a scholarly publication that will further both the mission of the RSAA and the collaborative efforts to present new and complex academic works pertinent to Romanian Studies in current times.

 

In the last years, the Romanian Studies Association of America has also become affiliated to other organizations and institutions, with the Society for Romanian Studies since 2014, and with the University of Bucharest since 2015, participating to international conferences and scholarly exchanges. In the coming years, RSAA will continue to expand affiliation with other institutions and organizations in order to create multiple venues of academic studies on East-Central Europe and the West, to promote academic research and collaboration on all aspects of Romanian culture and civilization as well as invite new and culturally exciting research and creative work in international contexts.

 

 

 

ACTIVITY:

MLA Panels

 

The Romanian Studies Association of America has been closely involved with the MLA, insofar as being affiliated and participating with panels on a yearly basis.
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MLA Panels to Date

MLA Sessions in Romanian Studies

 
 

2022

Multilingual Roots, Multilingual Identities: Romanian Language Justice in North America Affect and Multilingualism in the United States
Acculturation or Transnationalism? Two Faces of the Same Multilinguistic Experience

2021

Romanian Roots in North American Soil – Included in the Presidential Theme – The Art of Persistent Healing: Post-communist Medical Humanities

2020

Taking Stock: Romanian Culture, 1989–2019
Humanizing the (Post)Communist Paradigm: An Approach to the Rhetoric of Communism and Postcommunism in Its Own Theoretical Language

2019

Three Decades of Free Speech: Directions, False Starts, Intercultural Dialogue

2018

Aesthetics of Romanian Cinema, Literature, and Translation: Current Issues

Herta Muller and the Romanian Language, Culture, and Politics

2017

Refugees, Exiles, and Migration: Past and Present Journeys

Teaching Central and Eastern Europe and Its Communist Past

2016

Romanian Spirituality and the Global Challenge

Mothers without Frontiers: Inscriptions of Affective Maps in Contemporary Romania and the World

2015

Transnational Representations of Gender in Recent East European Literature and Film
Postcolonial Shadows on Postsocialist Skies
Negotiating Memory: Contemporary Romanian Culture in Translation
Catalan Literature in Translation and European Integration

2014

Remains of Utopia: Communist Kitsch, Propaganda, and Sentimental Artifacts in Postcommunist Romania
The Reciprocal Gaze between Romania and Spain State-Sponsored Voyeurism and Surveillance East European Women’s Tales of Relocation
 

2013

Looking Out, Looking In: New Directions in Romanian Cinema Becoming Women: Gender Identities and Tensions in Romanian and World Literature

2012

Romania’s Intellectuals and Ceauşescu’s Secret Police
Performing Postmodernity with a Balkan Flair

2011

Narratives of Departure and Return in Eastern Europe
Subversiveness and the Carnivalesque in Romanian and European Theater
Herta Müller: East-West Perspectives
Rethinking Feminisms in Eastern Europe

2009

Heritage and Trauma Tourism
Romanian and Eastern European Literatures and the Arts (Music, Painting, Architecture, Photography, and Film)
Romanian Revolution of 1989: Public Discourse Twenty Years After

2008

The Internet Dialogue between Eastern Europe and the United States Romania in the Cold War Culture Romanian Representations and Self-Representations in Film, Literature, and the Media

2007

Visions of Europe in Romanian Literature
New Romanian Cinema
Writing across Borders: Twentieth-Century Romanian Writers Abroad

2006

Living at the Outskirts: Cinema and East European Countries

West Goes East: (Re)Turning to East Central Europe after 1989—A Discussion
Mircea Cartarescu at Home in the World: Comparative Approaches to His Work

2005

Coming to Terms with the Holocaust in Romania
Eastern European Women as Cultural Mediators
Gypsies in European Literature, Culture, and the Arts

2004

Eastern European Women as Creators of Humor: Culture, Literature, Film Constructing Postcommunist Eastern Europe: New Faces of the Imaginary Paris as Promised Land: Francophilia in Eastern Europe

2003
The Politics of Fiction in Pre/Post Communist Europe
Loss and Gain: The 20th-Century East European Experience in Exile -a round table discussion
Eugène Ionesco–Between Cultures and Literatures: A Quest of Identity

2002
(De)vampirizing Culture: The Dracula Myth – roundtable discussion
Representations of Eastern European Women in Western Culture – roundtable discussion
Romanian-French Cultural Relations

2001
Modern Romanian Short Fiction in a Comparative Context
The Hapsburg Myth in East Central European Literature and Film
The Disenchanted Lyric Muse: Romania and Its Neighbors

2000
Romanian and East European Drama: Connections and Contexts
Symptoms of Theory: Nation, Enjoyment, Critique
Minorities’ Literature and Politics in Romania

1999
Eastern Fantasies: Memoir, Romance, and Transactions of Identity in Mircea Eliade’s and Maitreyi Devi’s Fiction
Feminine Figures in Romanian and Balkan Modern Literature
It’s Ending, It’s Not: Malaise à Roumaine à la Fin du Siècle

Open Meeting on Central and East European Literatures Arranged by the Discussion
Groups on Hungarian Literature, Slavic Literatures and Cultures, and Romanian Studies