Prof. Bogdan Ştefănescu

Professor of English
PhD, University of Bucharest, 1999
UB Profile
bogdan.stefanescu@lls.unibuc.ro
Office hours: by appointment

COURSES TAUGHT

Postcommunism / Postcolonialism: Siblings of Subalter(n)ity. A Course in the Comparative Study of Post-dependency Cultures

The Rhetorical Construction of National Identity

BIO & PUBLICATIONS

I am a fellow and grantee of the Fulbright Commission, the British Council, the University of London, the University of Stuttgart, and the New Europe College in Bucharest. My research focuses on literary history, critical theory, discourse and translation studies, nationalism, postcolonialism and postcommunism. I teach graduate courses in the rhetorical construction of national identity (for students in the British, American, and Canadian Studies MA programs) and in the comparative study of postcolonial and postcommunist cultures (for students of my own faculty, as well as of the Faculty of Letters, and of the Faculty of Political Science). My undergraduate classes cover neo-classical, romantic, and twentieth-century British literature and they include an introductory course in contemporary critical approaches. Recently, I have started teaching Academic Ethics to both undergrads and graduate students.

I have published several volumes as well as a good many academic articles and book chapters on British and European romanticism, on the comparative study of postcommunism and postcolonialism, and on the rhetoric of nationalist discourse. My literary translations (mostly from Romanian into English) have appeared individually or jointly in more than a dozen books from Romanian and US publishers.

I am editor-in-chief of University of Bucharest Review (http://ubr.rev.unibuc.ro/) and a founding member of the Romanian Society for British and American Studies for which I served on its first Directors’ Board between 1992-1994. I helped initiate the Literary Translation MA Program which was eventually developed into the Center for the Translation and Interpretation of Contemporary Texts at the University of Bucharest. I have also worked as a cultural manager and diplomat (deputy director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York between 2005-2007), a journalist and an editor for Secolul 20/21, an interpreter and translator for various Romanian, US and British organizations. I have served as a vice-dean and senate representative of my faculty for two terms. In May 2009, I was honored as “My Bologna Professor” by the Romanian National Association of Student Organizations. I am currently serving as Vice-Rector for International Relations of the University of Bucharest

Selective lists of my publications:

https://unibuc.academia.edu/BogdanStefanescu

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bogdan_Stefanescu

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books and edited volumes

  • Patrii din cuvinte. O tipologie retorica a discursurilor identitatii nationale, Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2017.
  • Trauma kulturowa jako palimpsest: (post)komunizm w kontekście porównawczym nowoczesności, totalitaryzmów i (post)kolonializmów/Cultural trauma as a palimpsest: (post)communism in the comparative context of modernity, totalitarianism and (post)colonialism (with D. Kołodziejczyk, M. Świetlicki), special issue of Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia 6/2017.
  • Postcommunism/Postcolonialism. Siblings of Subalternity, Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2013.
  • Romanticism: Revising the Epistemology of Romantic Studies, Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2013.
  • Postcommunism/Postcolonialism. Intersections and Overlaps (co-eds. M. Bottez si M.-S. Draga Alexandru), Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2011.
  • Postcommunism/Postcolonialism. Dictionary of Key Terms (with M. Bottez, A. Bottez, M.-S. Draga Alexandru, R. Radulescu & R. Visan), Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2011.

Journal articles and book chapters

  • “Romanian Modernity and the Rhetoric of Vacuity: Toward a Comparative Postcolonialism” in Romanian Literature as World Literature, eds.  M. Martin, C. Moraru, A. Terian, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.
  • “Peace talks: indexical master tropes and their potential for conflict in the construction of national identity.” ESSACHESS. Journal for Communication Studies, vol. 10, no. 1(19) / 2017.
  • “The Joke Is on You: Humor, Resistance through Culture, and Paradoxical Forms of Dissent in Communist Romania”, Miscellanea Posttotaliariana Wratislaviensia 1/2016.
  • “Filling in the Historical Blanks: A Tropology of the Void Postcommunist and Postcolonial Reconstructions of Identity” in D. Pucherova & R. Gafrik (eds.), Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literatures and Cultures, Brill/Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2015.
  • “Late (for) Modernity: Communist Colonization and Strategies of Identity Reconstruction in Romanian Culture” in Literature and the Long Modernity, eds. M. Irimia & A. Paris, Editura Brill-Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2014.
  • “Marginal Romanian Meets European Model: Noica and Modernity as Colonial Trauma”, in O. Ichim (ed.) European Integration/ National Identity; Plurilingualism/ Multiculturality, Aracne Editrice, Roma, 2014.
  • “The stylistics of postcommunist memory: a tropological approach to memoirs of communist incarceration”, in H. Gosk, D. Kolodziejczyk (eds.), Histories, Societies, Spaces of Dialogue, University of Kracow Publishers, 2014.
  •  „Narratives of the Emerging Self: Romania’s First Years of Post-Totalitarian Cinema in volumul Cinema in Transition”, (co-autor A. Foamete) ed. C. Portuges & P. Hames, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2013.
  • “Constantin Noica” in R. Clark, E. Elliott & J. Todd (gen. eds.), The Literary Encyclopedia, 2013.