Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies (ISSN 2003-0924, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University / Centre for the Research of the Imaginary "Speculum", "1 Decembrie 1918" University, Alba Iulia, Romania / University of Granada, Spain / Romanian Language Institute, Bucharest, Romania / Technical University of Civil Engineering – Department of Foreign Languages and Communication, Bucharest, Romania) publishes studies about Romanian language, literature, theatre and film, cultural studies, anthropology, history, translation studies, education as well as research seminars and reviews of works within these fields. It welcomes articles that focus on case studies, as well as methodological and/or theoretical issues. Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is a forum that sets and requires international high quality standards. The journal accepts papers written in Romanian or English, as well as in French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. As of 2024 SJRS is a biannual publication, having two issues per year regularly published by May 15.
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University
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Conceptul de „criză” în modernismul „târziu”: poezia americană a anilor ‘30 și poezia „generației războiului” în literatura română
A complex, intricate, and sometimes disruptive era, the first half of the 20th century was shaken by a significant number of crises, leading to fundamental transformations in the individual’s perception of the world and the self. Wars, sudden shifts of political regimes, economic decline, and existential anxiety gave shape to different “faces of modernity”, to use a syntagm borrowed from Matei Călinescu’s well-known study. Thus, modernism can be read as originating from a historical and a cultural crisis, as many scholars have noted, which are contingent on a crisis of identity and a crisis of language, reaching its highest point in modern poetry. Art and literature of the fifth decade, in general, and poetry, in particular, constituted responses and solutions to the fragmentation, gaps, and ruptures inherent to modernism, embedding them within legitimate aesthetic structures. However, countless authors of both literary and cultural studies have approached what is widely recognised as modern poetry mostly in matters of form rather than highlighting the social, economic or political implications central to its emerging context. The proliferation of this tendency led to modernism being, almost exclusively, associated in poetry with experimentalism and innovation in language. For instance, the avant-garde is considered more specific to European aesthetic modernism than other literary directions, yet equally fruitful and valuable. Nevertheless, amid the waves of crises that profoundly pervaded the social and aesthetic structures of modernity, language seemed to lose its ability to represent society and express the turmoil of that particular period, becoming fragmented in the process. Relying on the theory of an epistemological crisis set at the core of late modernism, developed by Justin Parks in his recent important study, Poetry and the Limits of Modernity in Depression America, this article advances the idea that at the basis of the identity crisis and of the language crisis, which crossed such a substantial segment of modern poetry – and the same is the case in both Romanian and American literature – stood, first of all, a social and a cultural crisis, intertwined with a spiritual one, usually not much brought into discussion. Moreover, the current article originally proposes closeness between the poets of the Great Depression, analysed by Parks in his essay, and the Romanian insurgent “war poets” (the syntagm is believed to have been used by Emil Manu in his often cited work, Eseu despre generația războiului [Essay on the War Generation]) grouped, at least initially, around the nonconformist magazine Albatros. On the one hand, Parks’ analysis of poetry in deep connection with various aspects belonging to the cultural and artistic production of the 1930s, and with society, in general, can be effectively grafted to the study of the Romanian poets who made their debut during the outbreak of the Second World War, confronting – like the American poets of the Depression – with the chaos of a society carved out by inequities and intense political upheaval. On the other hand, between the poetry written by Louis Zukofsky, Muriel Rukeyser, George Oppen or Langston Hughes and Geo Dumitrescu, Dimitrie Stelaru, Ion Caraion, and Constant Tonegaru’s texts can be traced a series of thematic, ideological and structural similarities, together with the language’s urgency of shifting from the detachment of aestheticism and from symbolism to social and political engagement on a stern, melancholic tone. In addition to these hypotheses, the concepts of crisis and authenticity can be combined to provide a broader understanding of how the poetic discourse of the second generation of modernists incorporated both individual and collective traumatic experiences, and managed to challenge not only the poetic tradition but also the political power.
Copyright (c) 2026 Sînziana-Maria Stoie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Bolsheviser or secular son: Reading Panaït Istrati’s Towards the other flame. After sixteen months in the U.S.S.R
In 1928-29, Panaït Istrati, by then established as a writer in France, as well as a controversial communist fellow traveller in his native Romania, undertook a secular pilgrimage across the vast extent of the U.S.S.R. After attending the celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1927, Istrati was now searching for “the other flame”, a new social ethos and what he thought would be the historical instantiation of salvation for all humanity. His autobiographical account of this journey is a “confession” steeped in the morality of the Eastern Orthodox religious tradition against which he ostensibly positions himself as a secular idealist. As a pious “Bolsheviser” seeking humanity’s secular salvation, Istrati therefore forces us to confront the Eastern Orthodox apocalypticism latent in the Soviet experiment. The same apocalypticism can be found in a superficially different form in the fascist-adjacent early work of Emil Cioran, which he was later to repudiate as part of his wider critique of the decay of western civilisation, but also in agonised penance for his youthful (ideological) sins. Cioran therefore forms a significant counterpart to Istrati, whose own disillusionment did not, however, lead to a complete break with communist ideal, although his criticism of the Soviet Union did result in his ostracism by the international communist movement. Whereas Cioran, as an émigré to France, moved away from the “enflamed” Orthodox ethnophyletism of Romania’s inter-war fascist ideology, Istrati, “broken”, as he himself put it, by his disillusionment with what he saw as the moral failure of the Soviet experiment, returned to Romania, paradoxically moving closer to the religious traditions he had always rejected. Although never converting, the former critic of organised religion, by now in declining health, stayed in an Orthodox monastery and published articles in the right-wing Curentul. In this context, the confessional style and structure of Istrati’s Vers l’autre flamme [Towards the other flame] can ultimately be read as a secular iteration of an older and underlying Orthodox eschatological tradition of humanity’s final redemption through suffering.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ileana Alexandra Orlich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Equivalence in the Romanian translation of Julie Otsuka’s novel The Buddha in the Attic
The study highlights how collective identity, culturally specific features, emotion, and ideological aspects, based on race and gender, are either preserved or not in the translation of The Buddha in the Attic, a novel by Julie Otsuka, a contemporary Japanese American writer. The novel tells the heartbreaking story of the Japanese picture brides and uses a narrative technique marked by the repetition of the collective voice “we”. The novel was translated into Romanian in 2013 by Casiana Ioniță, who rendered the original title as Buddha din podul casei. Building this investigation upon the works of scholars such as Eugene Nida (1964), Peter Newmark (1981, 1988), Anton Popovič (1976), Katharina Reiss (1989), Katharina Reiss and Hans Vermeer (1984), and Mona Baker (1992), the research aims to investigate the Romanian translation of The Buddha in the Attic through the lens of equivalence and non-equivalence, focusing on three chapters, “Come, Japanese!” (“Japonezii sunt bine-veniți!”), “Whites” (“Albii”), and “Traitors” (“Trădători”), especially analysing how phrases that carry ideological and cultural features are rendered in the translation. The article reveals how language reflects gender and racial constructs, emphasizing the translator’s role in conveying these aspects across cultural and linguistic contexts. By these means, the phenomenon of non-equivalence appears, where certain items of the ST cannot be completely reproduced in the target language.
Copyright (c) 2026 Raluca-Andreea Petruș, Ana Gvozdenovici https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The functions of water in Romanian fairy tale: A study of Dumitru Stăncescu and Petre Ispirescu collections
This article investigates the symbolic, narrative, and ethical functions of water in Romanian fairy tales, drawing on a corpus collected by Dumitru Stăncescu (2010) and Petre Ispirescu (1984), with selective comparative reference to Germanic and Slavic traditions researched in Brothers Grimm (2011) and Aleksandr Afanasyev (2020) fairy tales. Water emerges as a central organizing principle of narrative imagination, functioning in multiple, interrelated roles that structure plot development, mediate moral testing, and facilitate transformation. The study employs a motif-based methodology, systematically cataloguing narrative sequences in which water appears and analyzing them according to functional typologies. The approach allows for an integrated understanding of water as a dynamic agent within the narrative economy rather than as a static symbol. In Romanian fairy tales, water often operates as a liminal threshold, marking various transitions. Aspects and bodies of water (rivers, brooks, lakes and wells) define spatial and temporal boundaries, signalling the onset of trials, quests or transformative experiences. Immersion, bathing or proximity to water is regularly associated with shifts in identity, especially for female characters, and may precede changes in physical appearance, social or marital status, or even human and non-human embodiment. Sometimes, water functions as a site of moral testing, where enchanted or forbidden waters activate narrative crises, whose outcome depend solely on the dispositions of the characters. Consuming or coming into contact with forbidden water leads to immediate repercussions, frequently manifesting as transformation, illness, or social alienation. Certain narratives illustrate that restoration is either postponed or contingent, emphasizing water’s function as a mediating element in moral assessment rather than as a neutral or inherently advantageous entity. This is demonstrated in fairy tales such as Busuioc şi Musuioc from Stăncescu’s collection, where the brothers’ engagement with water shapes the moral and spatial outcomes of the story, ultimately resulting in their irrevocable separation from the human realm instead of their reintegration. A related function pertains to the role of water in resurrection and deferred restoration. Water serves to preserve bodes or identities, facilitating eventual reconstitutions through extended narrative processes. Stories that involve the repeated death and transformation of children exemplify how water mediates a prolonged suspension of life, postponing restoration until specific narrative and moral conditions are met. Likewise, enchanted waters offer promises of rejuvenation and renewal. A comparative analysis reveals that Romanian fairy tales set themselves apart from Germanic and Slavic traditions through their narrative restraint and ethical mediation. In contrast to the narratives of Brothers Grimm or Afanasyev, which frequently depict water as a striking or pivotal magical force, Romanian tales focus on ambiguity, gradual charge, and conditional restoration. In these stories, water serves as a medium through which moral, social and narrative repercussions emerge, thereby contributing to a unique poetics characterized by process, restraint, and ethical contemplation. Through a systematic examination of the various roles of water, this study illustrates its significance within the Romanian fairy tale tradition and establishes a foundation for future comparative investigations into water, symbolism, narrative agency, and the interplay of ritual, gender, and spatial dynamics in oral narrative traditions.
Copyright (c) 2026 Cristina-Ileana Rogojină https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Novel approaches to research in applied linguistics and language education: Insights from Teodora Popescu's work
The book Research in applied linguistics and language education: Design, methods and analysis authored by Teodora Popescu focuses on research methodology in applied linguistics and language education. It was designed for MA students, PhD students and early-career researchers who are striving to craft a career in applied linguistics and language education. The book provides the readers with a coherent overview of methods, approaches and theories pertaining to applied linguistics and language education. Conceived in a very systematic and user-friendly manner, the book guides the users throughout the entire research process.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria-Crina Herțeg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
James Joyce’s writing style translated into Romanian through Andra Ursa's lens
Andra Ursa conducts research analysis in the field of literary translation. She explores literary translation as a process of linguistic and cultural interpretation which does not reproduce the source text. Her analyses highlight the idea that translation is a dynamic process. In her book she examines the way in which Romanian translators and retranslators interpret James Joyce’s linguistic and stylistic innovations and complexities.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria-Crina Herteg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The feminized outcast: Gendering male marginality in Panait Istrati’s Kyra Kyralina
This paper examines the construction of masculinity in Panait Istrati’s Kyra Kyralina (1926/1971) through a gender-critical lens, focusing on the largely neglected queer figure of Stavro. While existing scholarship has predominantly addressed the novel’s exoticism and autobiographical elements, or the transgressive femininity of Kyra, comparatively little attention has been paid to the gendered complexity of its male protagonist. By foregrounding Stavro’s life narrative, this paper seeks to reassess Kyra Kyralina as a significant early twentieth-century exploitation of subordinated and queer masculinity. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity (1990/2006) and R.W. Connell’s model of hierarchical masculinities (1992/2005), the article conceptualizes masculinity as socially constructed, performative, and coercively regulated rather than a stable identity. Butler’s framework enables an analysis of Stavro’s repeated failure to embody hegemonic masculine norms such as authority, autonomy, and heterosexual dominance, while Connell’s typology elucidates the structural mechanisms through which such failures result in subordination, stigmatization, and vulnerability to violence. Together, these perspectives illuminate how masculinity is constituted in Istrati’s text through marginalization. The paper offers close readings of key episodes from the novel, including Stavro’s exposure to sexual exploitation, his homoerotic desire, and his social marginalization. These experiences are analyzed not as incidental biographical details, but as formative processes through which Stavro’s gendered identity is produced. Rather than presenting suffering as character-building or redemptive, Istrati depicts trauma as central to the formation of masculinity, challenging dominant literary tropes that equate male hardship with moral or heroic development. Most importantly, the paper argues that Istrati does not moralize or sensationalize queer desire. Instead, homosexuality is portrayed as intertwined with longing, confusion, and affective attachment, while social condemnation and coercion are shown to originate from surrounding patriarchal order. In this respect, the novel anticipates later queer trauma-informed approaches to gender by exposing the human cost of rigid normative frameworks. By repositioning Stavro at the center of gender analysis, this study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that reconsiders early twentieth-century literature as the site of critical engagement with masculinity. It ultimately argues that the text offers a prescient critique of gender norms, revealing masculinity as hierarchical and unstable, an insight that remains highly relevant to contemporary gender studies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Corina Mariana Mitrulescu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The topology of the attic in the dramaturgy of H. Ibsen, F. Wedekind, and M. Sebastian
An important topos of the imaginary and, implicitly, of literature, the attic of the house is a symbol within the major coordinate of space which, through its functional meanings, consciously or unconsciously guides the actions of characters. In order to approach the attic as a domestic space, we have drawn on the theoretical insights concerning interior space developed by Abraham Moles and Élisabeth A. Rohmer (1972), and especially on those offered by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space (1957/1963). Comparing the functions of the house built on the ground with those of the dwelling in an apartment block, Bachelard (1963, p. 26) proposes, for the drama of the “superimposed boxes,” the solution of reverie, more precisely “the metaphors of the ocean” (p. 28), a resolution that proves valid in a considerable number of literary works. It appears in Frank Wedekind’s Pandora’s Box (1904/1918), where the action of the final act takes place in the attic of an unconverted apartment building; through the two large windows, through which the sky should have been visible, the incessant drumming of rain penetrates, covering the city’s din and isolating the heroes who, each within his or her own interior space, are free to dream. In Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (1884/1900), the attic acquires a particular significance: it is an attic-forest that points toward the Bachelardian hut-house, where one feels removed from urban concerns and the bustle of the city, and where, within the realm of absolute imagination, human beings can remain young for a long time. Similarly, Mihail Sebastian’s Insula [The Island] (1947/1956) perfectly illustrates this type of reverie; a representative episode is the aspirin-induced intoxication of the three protagonists who live in a garret, on which occasion they imagine the ocean and an island, accompanied by a series of auditory elements that frame their reverie. In the plays under analysis, the attic or garret represents rationality; it is the space in which the characters become aware of the true reality in which they live and, moreover, accept it while seeking solutions to overcome the impasses they face. It is the place where time is abolished and escapism becomes, for all of them, a therapy of the soul.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gabriela Chiciudean https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Bridging the gap between digital humanities and natural language processing: Text cleaning and NLP accuracy evaluation of a sample of 20th century Romanian novels
Although Digital Humanities (DH) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) share common ground, the two academic communities around these disciplines rarely benefit from each other. This study aims to bridge the gap between the two fields of study, by attempting to establish whether off-the-shelf NLP tools are suitable for analysing DH-oriented textual corpora. Our case study focuses on The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel (DMRN), a digital archive which includes most of the novels in Romanian literature up until 1947. Currently, the archive is composed of more than 1200 digital files in the PDF format, derived from their original print editions. An optical character recognition (OCR) layer has also been added in the process, which opens the possibility of applying NLP techniques to these texts. On the other hand, OCRed texts are notoriously difficult to process, being laden with spelling errors and a significant amount of noise. Our case study had two main objectives: 1) to devise an automated method for cleaning the large quantities of OCRed literary texts found in the archive DMRN, in order to (2) analyse the texts by means of NLP with two of the currently available off-the-shelf models, namely spaCy and Stanza. The sample of our study consists of 15 novels published between 1933 and 1947. The extracted texts have been cleaned by employing a custom Python script and further sampled for NLP tasks such as tokenization, part of speech tagging and lemmatization. We then assessed the accuracy of the results of each separate task through manual validation. Overall, our methodology has proven to be efficient and time-saving with regard to the automatic cleaning process, but also satisfactory in what concerns the accuracy percentages of the performed NLP tasks.
Copyright (c) 2026 Bogdan Vătavu, David Morariu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A focus on the English and Romanian lexicons: The case of cognates
In terms of language acquisition and use, cognates are linguistic elements that pose difficulties for language learners and are an essential theoretical category to include in teaching processes. Through a qualitative descriptive approach, this article defines and illustrates the various types of cognates and proposes a classification of cognates into three categories (proper, partial, and deceptive), exemplifying the linguistic concept by focusing on two languages: English, a Germanic language, and Romanian, a Romance language, through targeted sampling. This article precedes an applied linguistics study on the challenges posed by deceptive cognates, particularly in the field of translation, as identified in the TERRA corpus (Translation Error Analysis).
Copyright (c) 2026 Raluca-Andreea Petruș https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Panaït Istrati sous la loupe de la Sigourantza
From his debut in 1923, Panait Istrati has been referred to as a particular case on the global literary scene. The mixture of his tumultuous biography with honest writing renders a particular type of excitement, coupled with the interest in social issues, which was a dominant of Istrati’s works. While engaged in very modest jobs in his hometown port of Braila, he began writing articles in the left media in between 1906-1910, being immediately appreciated for his directness and brightness. His first visit to Paris, for a few months between December 1913 and April 1914 took him closer to the international milieu. Five years later, in 1919, he connected with the Nobel Prize laureate, Romain Rolland. This was the key turning point and inspired him to start writing in French rather than Romanian only. Istrati and Rolland exchanged numerous letters in between 1919 and 1935, the year Istrati died. Rolland became for Istrati a mentor-father figure and launched him on the literary milieu in 1923. This paper complements biographical and literary aspects about Panait Istrati, extracted from the extensive documentary material preserved in the Sigourantza archives. Our contribution will focus on original elements included in the collection. Considering the question regarding the novelty of aspects contained in the collection, I look at several examples about his family, acquaintances and intellectuals who were closer or less close to the writer. Information about the writer’s travels, visits by family members or discussions on social, political and literary subjects confirm the coordinates of sincerity, generosity and friendship known to specialists and the general public.
Copyright (c) 2026 Dana Radler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Abafi Aigner Lajos and the secret societies in Banat in the second half of the 18th century
This study analyses the contributions of Abafi Aigner Lajos, one of the most significant figures in Central European Masonic historiography, to our understanding of Masonic lodges and secret societies in the Banat region during the second half of the 18th century. Although Abafi is internationally recognised, he remains relatively unknown in Romanian historiography, primarily due to the inaccessibility of his seminal works, which are written in Hungarian and German. This article emphasises the pivotal role he played in exploiting the Old Archives of Hungarian Freemasonry, which were subsequently destroyed, and the significance of his methodology, which was grounded in primary sources. Drawing on Abafi’s research, the paper distinguishes clearly between Masonic lodges and secret societies, demonstrating that the latter often pursued radical political objectives that were distinct from the philanthropic and cultural ideals of Freemasonry. A case study of Timișoara reveals the coexistence and rivalry between the Masonic lodge Zu den 3 weissen Lilien [At the three white lilies] and societies such as the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati and the Order of the Rose in a context marked by the Enlightenment, urbanisation and profound social transformation. The research emphasises the significance of Freemasonry and secret societies as catalysts for modernity and societal change in the Banat region during the Enlightenment era.
Copyright (c) 2026 Attila Varga https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
De la Balta-Albă la Le lac Blanc. În interiorul logicii autocolonizării – între o orientalizare căutată și una jucată
Starting from a comparison between the Romanian version of Vasile Alecsandri’s short story 24 de ceasuri la Balta-Albă [24 Hours in Balta-Albă] and its French version, entitled Le lac Blanc (Balta alba). Traduit du moldave [The White Lake (Balta Alba). Translated from Moldavian], published in the pages of the prestigious journal L’Illustration, this article aims to highlight several aspects. On the one hand, that through the structural modifications he introduced to the original, the Romanian writer was preparing his text for an encounter with a different cultural space—a metropolitan one—and with an audience little or not at all familiar with the political situation of one of the emerging civilizations that, around the revolutionary year 1848, was knocking at the door of the modern nations. He did so in an original manner: first, by entering into dialogue with some of the texts that had opened the way for communication between the two cultural spaces; then, by correcting — through a skilful staging that targets colonial discourse — some of the perspectives exercised upon the Romanian Principalities, to which, by repositioning them on the map of the world, he attributed the status of an internal Other. On the other hand, that the modifications under discussion reflect an evident process of Orientalizing, which fits the logic of Alexander Kiossev’s (cultural) metaphor of self-colonization — an Orientalizing that is both sought after and performed, since only in this way could that „Hegelian expectation of recognition” (Gandhi, 1996, p. 16) be fulfilled. This reveals an Alecsandri aware of the fact that, within the self–other dichotomy, the role of one is to recognize, while that of the other is to be recognized.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ioan Fărmuș https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Technical translation pedagogy in Romanian universities: Survey evidence on competence development and technology use
This article offers an examination of current pedagogical practices in technical translation training in Romania, situating them within a consolidated theoretical framework that integrates genre‑based approaches, competence development models, and technology‑mediated professional workflows. While recent scholarship has clarified the conceptual distinctiveness of technical translation by emphasising the functional, procedural and risk‑sensitive characteristics of technical genres, far less is known about how these insights are operationalised in the classroom. Addressing this gap, the study draws on empirical evidence collected through a national survey of 23 university translation lecturers affiliated with six Romanian institutions to map teaching methods, technology and AI integration, perceived student competencies, and curriculum–industry alignment. Methodologically, the research employs a structured questionnaire combining closed and open items, thus enabling both descriptive quantification of prevailing tendencies and qualitative interpretation of lecturers’ reflective accounts. The findings reveal a pedagogical landscape that has largely shifted towards practice‑oriented and interaction‑driven instruction, with project‑based learning, case studies, workshops and guided group activities emerging as central methods. However, despite this generally practice‑aligned orientation, the systematic use of authentic, workflow‑based translation projects remains uneven, suggesting that conceptual acceptance of genre‑anchored pedagogy does not always translate into full curricular implementation. Technology integration is widespread, particularly with machine translation systems, terminology tools and CAT environments, and lecturers consistently adopt a reflective rather than substitutional stance towards artificial intelligence. AI tools are predominantly used to foster analytical judgement, comparative evaluation and post‑editing competence—reinforcing the human translator’s role as responsible decision‑maker—while concerns related to licensing costs and institutional infrastructure continue to limit full incorporation of quality‑assurance and project‑management applications. With respect to student performance, respondents converge on a cluster of persistent difficulties that closely mirror the communicative and cognitive demands of technical genres: terminological accuracy and consistency, domain knowledge, contextual adaptation and revision competence. These challenges confirm the need to treat terminology governance, research strategies and revision workflows not as ancillary skills, but as core components of technical translation competence. Curriculum alignment with professional expectations is generally perceived as moderate, with local efforts towards industry engagement hindered by episodic collaboration and resource constraints. Taken together, the results delineate a field in transition: lecturers demonstrate strong awareness of contemporary theoretical developments and recognise the necessity of genre‑anchored, competence‑driven and technology‑aware training, yet institutional conditions, assessment traditions and infrastructural limitations constrain full realisation of these principles. By placing new empirical evidence in dialogue with an established conceptual trajectory, the study contributes not only to documenting current pedagogical practices but also to consolidating a coherent research programme in technical translation pedagogy. It concludes with structural recommendations for strengthening genre‑task alignment, integrating revision‑centred assessment, scaffolding competence development and institutionalising reflective technology use, thereby supporting the long‑term maturation of technical translation education within Romanian higher education and beyond.
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Dejica, Patricia Cornelia Grigoraș https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Despre românul perfect. Disecând epoci istorice și politici extreme
Alina Bako presents Marius Turda's 2024 book, “În căutarea românului perfect: Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă” [In search of the perfect Romanian: National specificity, racial degeneration, and social selection in modern Romania] (published by Polirom), as a landmark and indispensable synthesis in the field of Romanian cultural and intellectual history studies. Marius Turda, a professor at Oxford Brookes University (UK) and a leading international expert on eugenics, racism, and biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe, delivers a rigorous, evidence-based demythologization of modern Romanian history. At the core of his argument lies a stark conclusion: the notion of a “perfect Romanian” - an idealized, biologically and culturally pure national archetype - has never truly existed and was always a constructed fantasy rooted in anxiety, exclusion, and pseudoscientific ambition. Instead, Turda advocates for a healthier alternative: a tolerant, civic-oriented form of patriotism grounded in inclusion, democratic values, and critical self-reflection rather than ethnic or racial essentialism. The book meticulously brings together two dominant yet conflicting visions of Romanian identity that emerged in the 19th and especially the 20th centuries. On one side, romantic and literary discourses - prominent in the works of writers, poets, and cultural critics - celebrated the Romanian peasant as the embodiment of authentic national virtues: simplicity, moral purity, and deep connection to the land and traditions. On the other side, emerging medical, anthropological, and eugenic discourses expressed profound alarm over perceived "racial degeneration," demographic decline, and biological “weakness” among the population. Medicine was increasingly reframed not merely as a healing profession but as a “national science” tasked with engineering biological improvement through selective reproduction, social hygiene policies, and interventions aimed at strengthening the Romanian “race”. Turda examines these ideas with scholarly impartiality and nuance, situating Romania firmly within broader European trends. He shows how interwar eugenics, scientific racism, and antisemitism were not marginal or uniquely Romanian phenomena but part of a continent-wide intellectual current embraced by scientists, politicians, and cultural figures. In Romania, this manifested in exclusionary policies and rhetoric targeting Jews, Roma communities, people with disabilities, and other groups deemed “undesirable" or “degenerative”. Eugenic nationalism gained particular momentum after the creation of Greater Romania in 1918, finding enthusiastic support among prominent intellectuals such as Mihai Eminescu (in his proto-nationalist writings), Octavian Goga, Emil Cioran (in his early, controversial phase), and numerous physicians, biologists, and anthropologists who promoted ideas of racial purification and social selection. The analysis does not stop at the interwar period. Turda traces the persistence and adaptation of these discriminatory logics into the post-World War II era, including under communist rule, where certain biopolitical concerns were reframed in ideological terms while discriminatory practices against minorities and “socially unfit” individuals continued in different forms. By placing Romanian debates in transnational context, the book demonstrates how local ideas about national specificity and racial improvement circulated within - and were influenced by European networks of eugenic thought, from German Rassenhygiene to Anglo-American sterilization movements and French degeneration theories. Ultimately, În căutarea românului perfect functions as both a scholarly contribution and a vital educational and civic tool. It urges Romanian society to confront uncomfortable aspects of its past, dismantle lingering national obsessions with ethnic purity and biological exceptionalism, and prevent the repetition of historical abuses rooted in exclusion and pseudoscience. The book's significance has been widely recognized: in 2025, it was awarded the prestigious Observator Cultural Prize in the Essay/Publicistics category, affirming its impact on contemporary Romanian intellectual discourse. Through this meticulously researched and courageously honest volume, Marius Turda invites readers into an open, unflinching dialogue about the making (and unmaking) of modern Romania.
Copyright (c) 2026 Alina Bako https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Conceptual foundations and research scenarios in scientific translation
Scientific translation plays a crucial role in the global circulation of knowledge, yet it remains significantly underrepresented and insufficiently theorised within contemporary Translation Studies. This article positions scientific translation as a distinct field grounded in genre‑based analysis, epistemic discourse and technologically mediated scholarly communication. Drawing on previous work on scientific and technical translation (Dejica 2020, in press-a) and on a large‑scale review of Romanian doctoral research in translation studies (Dejica, Pungă, Badea & Vîlceanu, 2022), the study identifies a persistent mismatch between the communicative centrality of scientific discourse and its marginal presence in doctoral‑level inquiry. To address this gap, the article proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework structured around eight interrelated elements—type of study, approach, method, theory, domain, genre, medium and technology—and anchored in Translation‑Studies theories such as Skopos/Functionalism, Descriptive Translation Studies/Polysystem, Interpretive Theory, Relevance Theory, Translational Action, and competence frameworks including PACTE and EMT. The framework is operationalised through ten research scenarios designed to advance empirical, genre‑informed and technologically aware investigations into scientific translation. These scenarios address core features of scientific communication, including argumentation and claim construction, hedging and modality, terminological and conceptual systems, multimodal scientific discourse, accessibility and reader‑effort, multilingual citation practices, cross‑disciplinary genre variation and the professional ecology of scientific translation. Each scenario concludes with an explicit added‑value statement, highlighting its methodological contribution and potential relevance to doctoral training, editorial practice and scientific‑communication policy. By integrating conceptual clarity with scenario‑level specificity, the article offers a structured research agenda intended to support the systematic development of scientific translation as a rigorous, autonomous and socially relevant field within Translation Studies, while acknowledging the Romanian research landscape as its initial empirical context.
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Dejica https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Fragile structures of attachment in Carmen Firan’s The Lost Shadow
Relying on an interdisciplinary approach that blends Jungian criticism and cultural studies, this paper aims to analyze the Romanian writer’s drama, registered through the double filter of exile (Aciman, 2000; Hirsch, 1996; Hoffman, 2000; Manea, 2012) and transnational approaches to literature and identity (Basch et al., 2003; Jay, 2021; Schultermandl, 2021; Vertovec, 2009), as illustrated in the recent novel Umbra pierdută (2018) by Carmen Firan[1]. This book presents the evolution of a Romanian couple, Fred (a successful writer) and Mimi (an ambitious ballerina), relocated from communist Romania to France and eventually to the United States of America, where they are shaped differently by the values of the host country. Considering the fact that Firan settled in New York after 1989, when migration to the West was no longer prohibited, the paper aims to establish whether this novel, (first published in Romanian), advances a nostalgic perspective or a deterritorialized notion of the migrant’s identity, filtered through the dilemma of the deracinated writer. The discussion investigates the fragmentation of Fred’s subjectivity, an uprooted individual, divided by opposing forces that gradually consume him: on the one hand, the character acutely needs to express himself in Romanian, on the other hand, he is tragically constrained by the ideology of the American Dream and the logic of the market (Cullen, 2003). While Mimi is fascinated by American consumerist values, Fred seems to retreat more and more into an inner silence, a tangled thicket of feelings: nostalgia, guilt, fear, alienation. How can one interpret the character’s withdrawal into a space devoid of creative urges, as opposed to his prolific writing before emigration? In order to decipher the valences of Fred’s entrapment, the paper discusses his psychological decline through the grid of Jungian archetypes, especially persona and the shadow, whose connotations may serve to uncover the impact of exile on Fred’s creative potential. Comparing the two protagonists’ different reactions to the American realities, the discussion aims to answer a series of questions related to the status of Romanian literature and identity in the competitive context of American global capitalism. Can Fred's silence and flight be considered mechanisms of survival, resistance, or do they represent his unwillingness/inability to accept American consumerist ideologies? Can we say that The Lost Shadow outlines a diasporic or a transnational perspective on a Romanian (albeit fictional) case of transatlantic relocation? How does Carmen Firan, a writer coming from a minor culture, situate herself in the world republic of letters (Casanova, 2004) through her fictional heroes: through differentiation or assimilation? [1] In this paper, I have used the English translation of the novel, The Lost Shadow, published in 2022.
Copyright (c) 2026 Adriana Elena Stoican https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Genul fantastic în context totalitar. Convergențe în reprezentarea anti-eroului la Mihail Bulgakov și la Matei Vișniec
Our article examines the convergences and divergences in the portrayal of the antihero in Mikhail Bulgakov’s Maestrul și Margarita [The Master and Margarita] and Matei Vișniec’s Sindromul de panică în Orașul Luminilor [The Panic Syndrome in the City of Lights]. Both novels construct intricate narrative frameworks where the antihero emerges through multiple characters, establishing an intertextual connection between the two works. By applying contemporary methodologies to analyze social and cultural contexts, this study highlights the significance of intertextual relationships while exploring the semantic dimensions of both texts beyond their structural similarities. In both works, the antihero embodies the intersection of social traumas induced by totalitarianism and playful, non-monstrous fantastic elements. Additionally, the urban setting – a prominent topos in postwar literature – undergoes a comparable process of fictionalization in both novels. Through the antihero’s compensatory positive attributes, an ethical framework is reestablished within the narrative universe. Bulgakov’s fantastic imagery sets a new paradigm, which, when compared with Vișniec’s approach, underscores the shared motifs and modalities of the fantastic, illuminating the drama of modern humanity in a world literature context.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elena Purușniuc, Ștefan-Tudor Baciu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Practices of silence: Self-documentation and narrative limits in a Romanian catholic priest’s twentieth-century archive
This study examines how unspoken elements are given meaning in a specific case study and how they shape our understanding of everyday life as it is documented and narrated in the context of dictatorship and personal relationships. The investigation focuses not on what the documents say, but on what they conceal. Based on a corpus of over 2,400 documents – including carbon copies of letters, notes, and other paper-based documents – the study investigates how silence and reticence are embedded in everyday writing practices under conditions of censorship, surveillance, and personal constraint. The archive reveals that silence operates on multiple levels. In this study, we do not view silence as deficiency, but rather as a form of expression that is culturally shaped by the environment. Politically, it is shaped by self-censorship and the avoidance of sensitive topics or names. Personally, it appears in the suppression of emotions, indirect expressions of affection or allegorical writing in correspondence. Interpretation of the texts shows that omitted or concealed elements are often just as revealing as those that are written down. The fragile boundary between writing and its narrative limits is central to understanding not only the personal history of the main protagonist, but the broader conditions of writing under authoritarian rule. His documents speak not just through what they say, but through what they choose not to say – leaving traces of silence as durable as ink.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Szikszai https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Bad mothers and maternal ambivalence in Ciclul Hallipilor [The Hallipa cycle] by Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu and Patimi [Passions] by Sofia Nădejde
The article analyzes the symptomatic representations of maternal experience in the modern Romanian novel written by women. It aims to draw attention to maternal voices portrayed in literary texts across national contexts at the beginning of the 20th century. The two novels proposed for this study focus on two prominent Romanian women writers who held ideologically opposing views: Sofia Nădejde (1856-1946), a feminist and socialist activist, and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu (1876-1955), a well-established female novelist associated with the influential literary group which marked Romanian literary modernism during the interwar period – Sburătorul. This article examines the instrumental role of maternity and maternal ambivalence in these two novels. The often distant or even toxic relationship between mothers and children illustrates that maternity in this context is not a choice, but a question influenced by social demands and “female responsibility.” Thus, I explore significant aspects of “modern motherhood” as a gendered experience shaped by the social order: maternity as a matrimonial transaction, domestic oppression, social pressure, and finally, how the need for social emancipation and economic advancement interfere with the maternal role that women experience in terms of patriarchal constraints. This article aims to reflect on how these novels depict maternity as an experience beyond women’s agency.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ioana Moroșan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This paper explores, on many levels, the complex and multilayered symbolism of the island in the dramatic works of Mihail Sebastian, Jocul de-a vacanța [The Make-believe Holiday], Steaua fără nume [The Star with No Name], Ultima oră [Breaking News] and Insula [The Island], interpreting it not as a mere setting, but as a dynamic metaphor that reflects the psychological, existential, and relational landscapes of his characters. Both his literary creation and his biographical trajectory seem to be structured around a logic of insularity, conceived as a form of strategic distancing from an adverse environment be that social, historical or personal. This withdrawal into an interiorized space does not equate to passive isolation, but is configured as a gesture of silent resistance in the face of an alterity perceived as threatening, excluding and, often, violent. Thus, insularity becomes both a modus vivendi and an aesthetic of survival, articulating an identity marked by discretion, lucidity and fidelity to one's own values ​​in a deeply hostile context. Drawing on biographical, literary, psychoanalytic and philosophical frameworks, the study is structured into six chapters, each examining a different facet of the island motif. The opening chapter, The Island That Harbors No Wonders, addresses Sebastian’s biography and personal writings as a foundation for his dramaturgy of solitude, framing the island as an existential condition (a symbolic terrain shaped by the anxieties, disillusionments and inner exiles) rather than an idyllic retreat. The Island of the Self explores the ways in which his characters construct and negotiate their identities in conditions of isolation, engaging in a nuanced interplay between self-perception and otherness. Rather than presenting identity as fixed or coherent, the chapter highlights how solitude becomes a space of performative tension, where the estranged self is scrutinized and shaped through an internal dialogue with its own limits and imagined alternatives. The island is further examined in its negative valences in The Island-Dungeon, where it becomes a space of captivity, stagnation, and communicational breakdown. In contrast, The Island-Womb reclaims the insular space as one of warmth, intimacy, and regenerative potential, highlighting its positive, maternal associations. The fifth chapter, entitled The Expansion of the Island, proposes that love, however fragile or ephemeral, acts as a centripetal force capable of momentarily dissolving the boundaries of isolation, expanding the metaphorical island into a shared emotional territory. Even if it does not permanently resolve the condition of existential insularity, it creates brief moments of authentic connection that reconfigure the contours of the self and invite the possibility of communion. The final chapter, The Carnivorous Island, deconstructs the utopian mirage, revealing the island’s ultimate betrayal: its capacity to consume the individual and nullify idealistic aspirations. By tracing the metamorphoses of the island across Sebastian’s theatrical corpus, the paper demonstrates that the island functions as a liminal space, one in which the tensions between freedom and constraint, self and other, illusion and disillusion are staged with acute philosophical sensitivity.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lucia Ispas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Victoria S.-M. (2025). Rodica Braga – între confesiune și autoficțiune [Rodica Braga – between confession and autofiction]
This book review examines Sorina-Maria Victoria’s critical study, Rodica Braga –Între Confesiune și Autoficțiune [Rodica Braga – Between confession and autofiction]. The volume proposes a sustained rethinking of how literary identity can be approached in literature. Focusing on a study grounded in interdisciplinary hermeneutics, the review foregrounds the author’s methodological choices, theoretical innovations, and contribution to current debates on self-writing. Sorina-Maria Victoria approaches Rodica Braga’s literature through an identity-centered hermeneutics that foregrounds the dynamic interplay between confession and autofiction. The review highlights the volume’s central contribution: a coherent interdisciplinary interpretive framework that reads Rodica Braga’s poetry and prose as a unified project of self-writing.
Copyright (c) 2026 Bianca Bucur https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Pragmatic Competence in Learning Romanian as a Foreign Language: A Case-Study Analysis of Students’ Interpretation of Conversational Implicatures
This study examines how international students of Romanian as a foreign language interpret conversational implicatures, with the aim of assessing their developing pragmatic competence. Although Romanian has gained visibility as a target language for academic mobility, little research has explored how learners navigate its pragmatic norms, particularly those involving indirect meaning. The study adopts a case-study methodology and analyzes learner responses to six Romanian conversational scenarios designed to elicit interpretations of Quantity, Relation, Manner, and politeness-based implicatures, alongside two culturally specific forms frequently encountered in everyday interaction. Data was collected from written interpretations and follow-up clarifications, then qualitatively coded for accuracy, partial accuracy, and misinterpretation. The results show consistent difficulty with indirect refusals, deliberate vagueness, and culturally marked irony, while more straightforward Quantity implicatures were interpreted with relative success. Learners with greater exposure to informal Romanian demonstrated clearer sensitivity to speaker intention. This finding suggests that pragmatic development correlates with contact outside formal instruction. The findings highlight the need for explicit pragmatic teaching in Romanian language education and show how targeted scenario-based tasks can support learners in recognizing implicit meaning. The study contributes empirical evidence to the growing literature on pragmatics in less commonly taught languages and offers pedagogical insights for instructors working with international students.
Copyright (c) 2026 Gabriel-Dan Bărbuleț, Andra-Iulia Ursa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This paper aims to approach the concept of myth from a synthetic and selective perspective, highlighting a series of theoretical and interpretative elements that constitute, in fact, the complexity of this notion. In this regard, the present analysis seeks, from beginning to end, to trace an interdisciplinary and transversal conceptual framework, integrating perspectives from the philosophy of culture, anthropology, structural semiotics, and mythology, the last one being regarded as the principal horizon of reference. Beyond the introductory section, which presents various definitions of myth, more or less general, this paper also focuses on an implicit exploration of the concept’s internal structure. This allows for a closer examination of those elements that ensure, in essence, the perpetuation and continuity of a myth over time. Concretely, by valorizing the reflexive vision of Lucian Blaga, the study emphasizes from the outset the intrinsic connection between myth and other notions such as abyssal categories, stylistic factors, stylistic matrix, and the creative unconscious. Moreover, within this analytical endeavor, the process of structural radiography to which the myth is subjected primarily takes into account Claude Lévi-Strauss’s vision, according to which the essence of the concept resides precisely in what the theorist himself called a simultaneity of temporal character, namely, the capacity of a myth to exist both diachronically and synchronically. Fundamentally, this aspect supports what we might consider, at a strictly cultural-semiotic level, the interferential identity of myth. In the same vein, by continuing and even enriching the temporal criterion, the paper evokes another relevant theoretical perspective, that of the Romanian ethnologist Romulus Vulcănescu, centered on the concept of mythical chronotope and on the idea of mythopoetic imagination. When considered together, these two aspects enable the expansion of any mythical imaginary, especially if we refer to Vulcănescu’s systematized temporal duality, concretized in the antithesis between diurnal time and nocturnal time. Furthermore, in order to complete the notion of the mythical chronotope, Vulcănescu’s view is complemented by that of Mircea Eliade, though this time through the lens of another fundamental opposition between profane space and sacred space. Advancing within the parameters of this analytical-interpretative approach, the paper also examines the implications of the semiotic interdependence between myth and ritual. Thus, following Luc Benoist’s perspective, one may understand that any ritual represents the symbolic animation of a myth, a process through which the human being is situated within another ontological, archetypal dimension of the ab origo type, thereby inevitably sustaining the permanent nature of myth.
Copyright (c) 2026 Raluca-Denisa Nicoară https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The child’s voice in migration literature: on Miguel Gane’s Când o să te faci mare / Cuando seas mayor
This article examines Când o să te faci mare / Cuando seas mayor [When you grow up] the debut novel of Spanish-language writer Miguel Gane, through the lens of child-centered migration narratives. The text offers an autobiographical portrayal of a Romanian boy’s emigration to Spain and the emotional, linguistic, and cultural tensions that shape his formative years. Structured as a sequence of episodic fragments, the novel foregrounds the child’s voice - fragile yet lucid - as a narrative instrument that renders the affective dimensions of uprooting, socioeconomic precarity, and identity reconstruction. Gane’s use of lyrical language, confessional tone, and symbolic anonymity (the nameless village, child, and parents) emphasizes migration as both a social condition and an inner process of loss and adaptation. Positioned within contemporary literature of the Romanian diaspora, the novel reveals the child’s oscillation between vulnerability and resilience, highlighting how memory, familial bonds, and the search for belonging constitute the core of the migrant experience. Through this perspective, the study underscores the originality of Gane’s contribution to migration literature and the significance of childhood as a site of both trauma and transformation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Bîscal (Oprea) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The 25th of March 1821 on the political agenda of The Hellenic Union of Romania
The study discusses the celebrations of Greece’s main national day (25 March 1821) among the Greeks living in present day Romania, organized in the Hellenic Communities affiliated to the Hellenic Union of Romania, as reflected in the pages of the bilingual periodical, Ελπίς/Speranța (Elpis/Speranța) [Hope]. After a short introduction (1), we present: the Hellenic Union of Romania, its terriorial communities and presidents (2), drafting the portraits of kyrios Savas Tsokaridis (1934-2023), president of the Association of the Hellenic Community in București (3), and kyria Eleni Idu (1941-2022), founding president of the Hellenic Community in Cluj-Napoca (4). Then we turn to: the celebration of the main national day of Greece as reflected in Ελπίς/Speranța (5), eventually insisting on the political agenda of the 25th March 1821 in Romania and Greece, namely on the Hellenic Communities from Romania (6), as well as the Romanian and Greek highest-ranking politicians (7) celebrating the 25th March 1821. We conclude our study with a few final remarks (8), regarding both Romania’s domestic policy of observing the rights of its national minorities (including the Greek minority) and the good example offered by Greece in protecting its Greek diaspora.
Copyright (c) 2026 Ela Cosma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Feminist ideology and translated literature, Alexandra-Maria Vrînceanu
Alexandra-Maria Vrînceanu’s Feminist Ideology and Translated Literature, published in 2024, enters the relatively less researched field of gender-oriented translation studies, offering a rigorous overview of feminist translation theory and a substantial corpus of case studies. Combining a historical survey of feminism, an overview of translation studies, and detailed analyses of literary works by Muriel Spark, Erica Jong, Hélène Cixous, Margaret Atwood, and Magda Cârneci, the book focuses on the complex interplay between ideology, gender, the agency of the translator, and reception in the target culture. Vrînceanu’s volume leans neither towards separating literary and cultural theory from translation and traductology, nor towards subsuming one field under the other, but rather brings them into a mutually reinforcing relationship. In this way, it situates translation practice within established international theoretical frameworks, thus bridging a significant scholarly gap and offering a methodological model for future research by scholars, students, and translators alike.
Copyright (c) 2026 Mădălina Elena Mandici https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Robinson Crusoe retold and retranslated into Romanian (1835–2023): From mimesis to telesis
Our attempt to construe the ways in which translation redefines texts for children is based on a corpus (i.e., Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe translated into Romanian) which spans three centuries. Our conjectures are based on an in-depth analysis of a selection of 11 out of 36 identifiable Romanian versions, the main criteria for selection being their availability but also their relevance to the various periods in the history of translations and to the history of the Romanian language (which often went hand in hand). The selection goes accordingly from 1835 (the probable date of the first translation of Crusoe’s story – rather than text – into Romanian) up until 2023 (when the latest version came on the market), with equally interesting editions (published in 1899, 1900, 1908, 1943, 2017, 2018, and 2022, respectively) in-between. The aspects we examine are the relationship between translation and adaptation; the reasons behind retranslation (among which linguistic change, ideological change, corrective change); the ways in which retranslation has redefined Robinson Crusoe; the (inverse) relationship between the two basic purposes modulating (translated) children’s literature (namely to teach and to entertain). Since our selection covers three centuries, they are tagged according to the prevailing ideology regarding the translation of children’s literature (e.g. translation norms, translation practice) at the time. Therefore, we consider nineteenth-century translations to be largely governed by mimesis, the twentieth century could be characterized by synopsis and meiosis, and the dawn of the twenty-first century does point to a sort of which will hopefully move towards telesis (if intelligently planned and directed). For a transnational approach, we contrast our case-study with the situation in France (which represented a model and an influence in various key moments of the Romanian translation history) and the situation in the Republic of Moldova (which was, in turn, influenced by the Romanian situation).
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniela Hăisan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
“Light and darkness”: The Transylvanian Orthodox apostolate against racism in the time of Bishop Nicolae Colan
The idea for this research project, which is dedicated to the Orthodox theologian Puiu Ioan Hojda and his reflections on racism in the context of Christian theology, emerged after I had finished working on the archival guide for the Romanian Orthodox Theological Institute/Academy in Cluj. During that time, while consulting fundamental documents concerning the aforementioned prestigious institution in the Archive of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Vad, Feleac, and Cluj, I also came across manuscripts by theologians who had studied at this Academy at various points in its history. Through my research, I demonstrated that the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania adopted a firm stance against racism, viewing it as a real danger to the spiritual lives of the faithful. Meanwhile, the communist political authorities launched their own rhetoric against this “scourge”. From their perspective, the idea of the “Superior Man” (American) and the “Superior Race” (Western) — who had created an atomic weapon of mass destruction to subjugate the world and those considered to belong to an inferior race — had to generate extensive counterpropaganda. This discourse was indeed created and had a significant impact at the time. The manuscript by the theologian Puiu Ioan Hojda is a compelling exploration of the intellectual history that led to the formation of radical European racism, which ultimately resulted in the major horrors of the 20th century.
Copyright (c) 2026 Attila Carol https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Utopie postumanistă și parabolă politică în proza lui Sergiu Fărcășan
The paper proposes a reinterpretation of Sergiu Fărcășan’s prose – more precisely, of the novels Atacul cesiumiștilor (1963) [The Attack of the Cesiumists] and Vă caută un Taur (1970) [A Bull Is Searching for You], as well as the short story collection Mașina de rupt prieteniile (1968) [The Friendship-Breaking Machine] – highlighting the ambiguity of the science-fiction scenarios, which simultaneously legitimize and undermine a totalitarian political ideology. The selected texts are built upon the constant tension between the cliché of official propagandistic discourse – in which technological achievements serve humankind and stand as a sign of its superiority, as well as of the political regime that makes them possible – and the undermining of official policy through the use of parable and the imagining of utopian worlds. The posthumanist problematic – illustrated by the confrontation between the human and artificial-intelligence systems, the matter-information relationship, the prosthetics of the human body, the state of consciousness, or the cyborgization of the narrative – serve both the discourse of technological-optimism propaganda and a set of serious inquiries developed in a political and profoundly humanistic key. The propagandistic discourse acquires posthumanist overtones, for the technological progress leads to a deconstruction of the human, both through massification and through remodelling, whether mental or physical.
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniela Petroșel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0