Romanian Studies

Study of the history, language, and culture of Romania has been part of the Indiana University curriculum for East European studies since the early 1950s. In its Russian and East European Institute (REEI) and Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Indiana University offers:

• A Romanian studies graduate student fellowship;
• One of the largest concentrations of Romanian studies specialists in the United States;
• Three years of language instruction during the academic year and a summer intensive language program;
• Library resources sufficient to support advanced research in Romanian studies; and
• Strong relationships with Romanian institutions of higher learning
• Regular international conferences on Romanian topics.

Faculty

Four Indiana University faculty members are native or fluent speakers of Romanian and focus on Romania's history, language, literature, and politics as their areas of specialization.

Christina Zarifopol-Illias is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Romanian language and culture. She teaches Romanian at elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. Professor Zarifopol-Illias also teaches Latin in the Classics department and supervises the elementary Latin program. Her translations with Adam J. Sorkin of poems by Marta Petreu won the 1999 Kenneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize; selected poems have been published in several literary journals. She has published a volume of previously unknown letters of Mihai Eminescu, Romania's national poet (New Correspondence: Mihai Eminescu-Veronica Micle, Polirom, 2000) and a book on Pliny the Younger's letters (Portrait of a Pragmatic Hero: Narrative Strategies of Self-Presentation in Pliny's Letters, Polirom, 2000). Teaching Awards: IU Trustees Teaching Award (2002), Teaching Excellence Award (Slavics and Classics, 1998, 1999, 2000). Professor Zarifopol-Illias recently served as a Member of the Fulbright National Screening Committee.

Maria Bucur is Associate Professor and John V. Hill Chair in East European History and the former director of the Russian and East European Institute. Her research and teaching interests focus on European history in the modern period, especially social and cultural developments in Eastern Europe, with a special interest in Romania (geographically) and gender (thematically). She began her intellectual journey by investigating the ways in which cultural producers and social policy makers tried to engineer the future during the first half of the twentieth century. This led to the publication of her first book, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (2002). She moved on to examine how various local communities and official state institutions in Eastern Europe tried to engineer the past, by constructing representations of wartime violence through monuments and commemorative processes. This has resulted in her newest book, Heroes and Victims. Remembering War in Twentieth Century Romania (2009). In addition to these books, Professor Bucur has published a number of essays on eugenics, philanthropy, the cultural history of the Great War, commemorations of World War II, and gender and war. She is currently working on a project entitled “Everyday Citizenship and Gender. A Transnational Study,” which compares case studies from Romania and the United States. Her teaching combines these specific research interests with broader pedagogical ones. She has taught courses on the idea of Europe, film and history, memory and war, gender in Modern Europe, as well as communism in Europe. Professor Bucur is also the President of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (2009-2011) and the faculty advisor to the IU Romanian Studies Organization.

Selected Awards: National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant (2009), Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award (2006), Multidisciplinary Development Grant, Indiana University (2004), Indiana University Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2002), National Endowment for the Humanities Research Grant (2001), Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Grant (1999), I.R.E.X. Resident Research Grant (1995)

Courses Recently Taught: Eastern Europe under Communism (undergraduate/graduate), Global Feminisms (graduate), The Idea of Europe (undergraduate), Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (undergraduate/graduate), Nationalism in the Balkans, 1804-1920 (undergraduate/graduate), Women, Men, and Society in Modern Europe (undergraduate), Opposition, Survival, and Resistance in Communist Eastern Europe (undergraduate and graduate), Problems in East European Historiography: Graduate Colloquium, Cultural History: Graduate Seminar, Cultural History: Memory and Culture (graduate), Gender in Modern Europe

Publication Highlights
Heroes and Victims. Remembering War in Twentieth Century Romania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Making Europe. People, Politics and Culture, co-author with Frank Kidner, et al. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. [Co-edited with Nancy M. Wingfield] Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania. Series in Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002. Translated into Romanian as as Eugenie si modernizare in Romania interbelic tr. Raluca Popa. Iasi: Polirom, 2005.
Patriarhat si emancipare in istoria gindirii politice romanesti [Patriarchy and Emancipation in the History of Romanian Political Thought]. [Co-edited with Mihaela Miroiu] Iasi: Polirom, 2002.
Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present. [Co-edited with Nancy Wingfield] Central European Studies Series. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001.

Aurelian Craiutu (PhD Princeton University, 1999) is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is affiliated with the Russian and East European Institute, The WEST European Studies Institute, and the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. His research interests include French political and social thought, varieties of liberalism and conservatism, democratic theory as well as theories of transition to democracy and democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe, and in particular, Romania. Among the graduate courses taught are "Before and After the Revolution of 1989," "Classics of Social and Political Thought," and "Moderation and Radicalism." In May-June 2005 and 2006, Professor Craiutu taught as Visiting Professor at the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest. During the AY 2009-10, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Paris II Pantheon-Assas.

Aurelian Craiutu is the author of several books on modern political thought including Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003; CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award); In Praise of Liberty: Essays in Political Philosophy (1998; in Romanian), and In Praise of Moderation (2006; in Romanian). Aurelian Craiutu has also edited several books including Guizot's History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe (Liberty Fund, 2002), Madame de Staël's Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (Liberty Fund, 2008), Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (with Jeremy Jennings, 2009), America through European Eyes (with Jeffrey C. Isaac, 2009), and Conversations with Tocqueville (with Sheldon Gellar, 2009). He has received awards, fellowships and grants from several institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Earhart Foundation. In 2000, he won the American Political Science Association's Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political theory.

Ronald Feldstein, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures (Ph.D., Princeton University), has been at Indiana University since 1976. He has taught and published in the fields of Slavic accentology and historical phonology, and also on morphological topics in Slavic and Romanian. Four recent papers are on the subjects of Proto-Slavic monophthongization, the morphological predictability of Russian stress, Russian aspectual derivation, and Romanian conjugational syncretism. During the summer of 2005 he presented papers in Moscow, Zagreb, and at Duke University. In the summer of 2006, Professor Feldstein was invited to the conference Diachronia, in Lodz, Poland, where he presented a paper on the enigma of Polish vowel length in reflexes of Protoslavic *tort- sequences. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, he presented papers on Slavic accentology at the IWOBA (International Workshop on Balto-Slavic Accentology) conferences in the Netherlands and Austria. In fall, 2009, while on sabbatical, he presented a series of lectures in Moscow, at the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU). A selection of his recent papers is available here.

Our Romanian studies faculty have been honored by the Romanian government for their scholarship on Romanian issues. In November 2000, Zarifopol-Illias, the late Matei Calinescu (Comparative Literature), and Virginia Zeani (Music) were presented with medals of “Faithful Service” by Romanian President Emil Constantinescu, recognizing their efforts to advance Romanian studies in the United States. Zarifopol-Illias was also presented with a special medal commemorating the 150th birthday of Romania’s national poet, Mihai Eminescu, for her 2000 publication of My Sweet Lady/My Beloved Emin: New Correspondence Mihai Eminescu - Veronica Micle. In May 2002, Professor Emeritus Nicholas Spulber was awarded one of Romania’s highest honors, The Order of Merit in the rank of High Commander, presented by President Ion Illiescu. Spulber was also named Doctor Honoris Causa of the National School for Political Science and Public Administration – Bucharest. In May 2006 Bucur, Craiutu, Jeffrey Isaac (Political Science), David Ransel (History), and Zarifopol-lIlias received the Gold Medal from the National School of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest in recognition of their contributions to academic exchanges between Romania and the United States.

The IU Romanian studies program was built on many years of contributions by other scholars. Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics, Nicolas Spulber, died in January 2004. Although he retired from teaching in 1980, Professor Spulber remained active in our program to the end of his life. His last book was Russia's Economic Transitions published by Cambridge University Press in 2003.

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, died in January 2005. After emigrating to the United States in 1977, Zarifopol-Johnston was for many years the Romanian language instructor at IU. In recent years, Professor Zarifopol-Johnston's research interests had returned to her native Romania, specifically as the American translator and editor of the early Romanian texts of the philosophical essayist, E.M. Cioran. In addition, she was writing a memoir of her own life, called The Escape Artist: Memoirs of a Communist Girlhood, as well as a memoir of her friendship with Cioran in Paris.

In June 2009, Matei Calinescu, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature passed away. Professor Calinescu was already a prominent literary critic and writer in Romania when he joined IU’s comparative literature faculty in 1973. The major themes of his research were: Literary Theory, Modernism and Postmodernism, Theories of Reading and Interpretation, Literature and Politics and Romanian Cultural History. His numerous publications include Faces of Modernity (Indiana University Press, 1977), expanded and updated as Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Duke University Press, 1987), which has been translated into Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Swedish and Romanian; Rereading (Yale University Press, 1993), translated into Romanian, and many essays and articles in such journals as: The Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Poetics Today, Clio, Semiotica, The Comparatist, The Stanford French Review, The Bucknell Review, World Literature Today, Comparative Literature, The Journal of Religion, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Salmagundi, East European Politics and Societies, and others. Current Romanian Studies faculty member Christina Zarifopol-Illias was Professor Calinescu’s student at the University of Bucharest. See the October 2009 edition of REEIfication to read her tribute to Professor Calinescu.

Barbara and Charles Jelavich. Barbara Jelavich was SRS President in 1988-1990 and an honorary member of the Romanian Academy. Professor Emeritus Charles Jelavich remains active in REEI's East European programs. The Jelaviches organized the first international Habsburg Conference at IU in 1965, which marked the birth of modern Habsburg studies in the U.S. and was the first conference in the U.S. to which the Romanian Academy sent a major delegation.

Several other REEI faculty members specializing in East European Studies serve as mentors for students doing research on Romania.

Jack Bielasiak (political science) studies transitions to democracy and post-communist electoral systems; Jean Robinson (political science) works on family responses to state policies in post-socialist societies; Owen Johnson (journalism/history) researches mass media in East Central Europe; Jeff Isaac (political science) has traveled to Bucharest on two occasions as a guest of the National School of Political Science and Public Administration to offer workshops for faculty and students and plans on making this collaboration a long-term commitment; and Beverly Stoeltje (folklore) teaches nationalism, difference, and gender in East Europe.

Academic Program

Indiana University's interdisciplinary program in East European studies presents students with several options for a course of study on Romania. All students can enroll in up to three years of language instruction during the academic year, and summer intensive language instruction is available for the first year of study. Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships are available for graduate students pursuing Romanian language study during both the academic year and summer session.

Undergraduate students pursuing a bachelor's degree in virtually any discipline or professional school can include Romanian studies in their course work and graduate with a minor from REEI. REEI offers a master's degree in Russian and East European studies for students seeking professional careers in government, nonprofit organizations, or private business that require advanced knowledge of the language and culture of Romania. Students pursuing a Ph.D. in most disciplines and professional school graduate students (M.B.A., M.P.A., M.L.S.) can also pursue course work in Romanian studies toward a dual M.A. degree, Graduate Area Certificate in Russian and East European Studies, or Ph.D. minor. IU M.A. and Ph.D. graduates in Romanian studies have gone on to successful careers. Two graduates have worked for the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) in Bucharest as bureau chiefs; another was a visiting professor of political science at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj; and still another recently began working in one of the Intelligence Agencies of the U.S. government.

Graduate Student Fellowship

Indiana University is proud to announce the first Romanian Studies Graduate Fellowship in the United States. Prospective graduate students who are applying in any discipline with a research focus in Romania are encouraged to apply. The fellowship carries a two-year tuition and fee waver and a stipend of $10,000 per year. Applicants should be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and need to be applying to an M.A. program (though they are also eligible if they wish to continue into a Ph.D. program). Applicants need to have proficiency in Romanian or be committed to enroll in language classes at Indiana University in order to gain a proficiency in the language. No separate application is required. To notify REEI of your interest in being considered for this fellowship, please contact the Institute. This fellowship is awarded biennially. The next fellowship will be awarded for the 2010/2011 academic year.

Alumni

Erin K. Biebuyck (MA in REEI, 2009), Romanian history. Erin defended her MA thesis, entitled “The Collectivization of Pleasure: Normative Sexuality in Post-1966 Romania,” in October 2009. She is currently working on a PhD in history at IU.

Jeremy Stewart (MA/MBA in REEI and Kelley School of Business, 2009). Jeremy is currently working for Intel Corporation in California

Brant Beyer (MA/MPA in REEI and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, 2008). Former Peace Corps Volunteer in Sf. Gheorghe and current Project Manager for West European Studies at Indiana University.

Amy Luck (MA/MS in REEI and International and Comparative Education, 2008) lives in Stockholm, Sweden, where she has started her own freelance writing and editing company. Amy also works as a communications consultant for Electrolux and does contract work for companies and government offices, such as Scania and the Swedish Ministry of Finance.

Meagan Call (MA/MPA, 2007) After two years at the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, Megan is now the International Student Services Coordinator at the University of Miami.

Andrew Burton (MA in REEI, 2006) Andrew served as Academic Advisor/Assistant Director for Student Services in the Russian and East European Institute from 2007 to 2009. He is currently working for the US Government.

Jennifer Cash, (IU Ph.D., 2004), Anthropology Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany and member of the Economy and Ritual Group in the Institute’s Postsocialist Studies Department. Dr. Cash is currently conducting fieldwork in Moldova.

Richard Hall, (IU Ph.D., 1997), Political Science. He is currently working for the US Government.

Mark Temple,(IU M.A., 1995) Romanian History. A former Asylum Officer for the US Government, Mark has moved on to another position also with the US Government.

Jeff Pennington,(IU M.A., 1993), Romanian History. Executive Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and Co-Director of the European Union Center of Excellence at University of California Berkeley.

James Niessen, (IU PhD, 1989), Romanian History. World History Librarian at Rutgers University's Alexander Library.

Richard Frucht, (IU PhD, 1980), Professor Emeritus of History at Northwest Missouri State University.

Paul Michelson, (IU PhD, 1975), Distinguished Professor of History at Huntington University. Professor Michelson is the author of Romanian Politics, 1859-1871: From Prince Cuza to Prince Carol and the former president of the Society for Romanian Studies (2006-2009).

William Oldson, (IU PhD, 1969), Professor of History and Director of the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University. Professor Oldson’s publications include The Historical and Nationalistic Thought of Nicolae Iorga, A Providential Anti-Semitism: Nationalism and Polity in Nineteenth Century Romania, and The Politics of Rite: Jesuit, Uniate, and Romanian Ethnicity in 18th Century Transylvania.

Frederick Kellogg, (IU PhD, 1969), Professor of History at University of Arizona. Professor Kellogg is the author of A History of Romanian Historical Writing, and The Road to Romanian Independence, which was awarded the national Nicolae Iorga prize from the Romanian Academy in 1997.

Radu Florescu, (IU PhD, 1959), Professor Emeritus of History, Boston College. Professor Florescu is the author of several books on Romanian history, including Essays on Roumanian History, The Struggle against Russia in the Romanian Principalities, and Dracula: Prince of Many Faces.

Summer Language Study

Indiana University has a summer language program open to students from other universities, upper-level high school students, non-degree students, and members of the community, as well as IU students. The Summer Workshop in Slavic and East European Languages (SWSEEL) offers a full year of beginning Romanian language training in a single eight-week, immersion-style summer session, mid-June to mid-August each year. By special agreement with the Indiana state legislature, all summer intensive language students pay tuition at the in-state rate ($2919.70 for 10 credit hours in 2010). Fellowship awards for tuition and a stipend are available on a competitive basis.

Library

Indiana University's Romanian collection is among the top four at university libraries in the United States. The Indiana University Main Library has more than 15,000 volumes in the Romanian language, the richest areas being philology (over 5,000 volumes) and history (over 3,000 volumes), with many holdings in statistics, politics, and general periodicals. These works are supported by strong holdings for East European studies, such as our complete holdings of Foreign Broadcast Information Service: Daily Reports, Eastern Europe, the Joint Publications Research Service East Europe publications, and all of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty materials. Important recent additions include microfilm of the newspaper Universul, 1918-1959, and Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Romania, 1945-1959. The IU Libraries maintain exchanges with the university libraries in Cluj and Bucharest and with the Romanian National Library.

Indiana University's Moldovan Collection is growing in the broader context of the Slavic and East European collection’s efforts to support Indiana University's growing academic interest in the small post-communist nations. Currently it consists of about 1,700 titles, including about 45 serials, 1,500 vernacular monographs (about 75% of which are in Russian), and a little over 100 English monographs.

Visiting Scholars and Prominent Guests

Guest lectures and special events are an important component of Indiana University's Romanian studies offerings. IU has hosted many visits by Romanian international scholars and government officials as well as American specialists. Visitors have included C. C. Giurescu and Al. Rosetti (1960s), dissident writer Paul Goma (1978), dissident historian and director of the Romanian Service at Radio Free Europe Vlad Georgescu (1979), dissident poet Dorin Tudoran (1980s), historian Dinu Giurescu (1980s), journalist Gabriela Adamesteanu (1990), poet Andrei Codrescu (1990), literary critic Mircea Mihaies (1992, 2000), political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu (1990, 1993, 1994, 2003, 2007), Ambassador Aurel Dragos Munteanu (1994), Cornelia Bodea (1970s-1990s), and many others. Before becoming Romania's president, Emil Constantinescu spent five days at Indiana University in 1992, and Queen Anne of Romania visited the campus in 1996. Visitors in the last few years include Ambassador Sorin Dimitru Ducaru (2002), political analyst Mihaela Miroiu (2001-2002), political analyst Daniel Barbu (2002), consul to the Romanian Embassy in Chicago Sever Voinescu (2000-2002), assistant director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City Bogdan Stefanescu (2005), and graphic artist and museum curator Irina Hashas (2006).

Conferences and Other Events

Indiana University frequently hosts conferences and other academic events that attract visitors from across the United States and abroad. For the past four years, the Romanian Studies Organization has hosted annual conferences for graduate students and recent PhDs to share their research on Romania in a wide variety of disciplines. The Fifth Annual Romanian Studies Conference will be held March 30-31, 2012.

The Fourth Annual Romanian Studies Conference was held March 25-26, 2011.Stella Ghervas, winner of the Grand Prix of the French Academy, delivered the keynote address, entitled “How far from Europe? Romanian Society between Orthodoxy and Modernity." For more information, click here.

The Third Annual Romanian Studies Conference was held February 5-6, 2010. Daniel Chirot, Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor of International Studies and Sociology at the University of Washington, delivered the keynote address. Professor Chirot’s talk, entitled “Ideology and the Tragic Twentieth Century in Romania,” examined major ideological movements that led to tragic outcomes in twentieth century Romania, namely ultra-nationalism, xenophobic anti-Semitism, fascism, and communism. The conference continued the following day with panels beginning at 9 a.m. Young scholars from around the United States and Europe presented cutting-edge research in Romanian history, politics, international relations, media studies, art, and architecture. To read more about the conference, see the February 2010 issue of REEIfication.

At the second Romanian Studies Conference in February 2009, Holly Case, Associate Professor of History at Cornell University, gave the keynote address entitled “A Powerful Example: Regional Networks around Romanian Problems.” More information about the conference can be found in the April 2009 issue of REEIfication.

In March 2008, Marius Turda, RCUK Academic Fellow in 20th Century Central and Eastern European Bio-Medicine at Oxford Brookes University gave the keynote address at the first Romanian Studies Conference. The unifying theme of the panels and the discussions that they provoked was the question of Romanian identity and the relationship of minorities and other traditionally marginalized groups, such as orphans, the mentally ill, and the Roma to that identity. Research presented at the conference challenged the scholars involved to re-think the established understanding of Romanian-ness and the role of minorities in the Romanian nation. Read more about the conference in the April 2008 issue of REEIfication.

On March 22-24, 2007, Indiana University hosted the "The Hour of Romania," an international gathering of prominent Romanian studies scholars from various disciplines held in honor of Romania’s accession to the European Union. For a full description, please visit the Hour of Romania page of the Russian and East European Institute.

In 1999, Maria Bucur organized an exhibit on propaganda posters from communist Romania, together with a series of talks on the 10th anniversary of the fall of communism. More recently, Bucur has been part of a multi-disciplinary team that has hosted every spring the Roundtable on Post-Communism. Guests of these roundtables have included Vladimir Tismaneanu, Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park and Mihaela Miroiu, Professor of Political Science at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest.

Cultural Activities and Resources

IU students have organized a Romanian Studies Organization that sponsors cultural activities such as coffee hours, showings of Romanian films, guest lectures, and other special events. To read about REEI students active in Romanian studies, please read the October 2006 issue of the REEIfication newsletter. REEI provides graduate student or faculty speakers free of charge to K-12 teachers and community organizations interested in learning more about Romania.

International Romanian Studies Information

Society for Romanian Studies Home Page

Contact Information:
REEI, Indiana University
Romanian Studies
Ballantine Hall 565
Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: (812) 855-7309
Fax: (812) 855-6411
E-mail: reei@indiana.edu
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~reeiweb