Dr. Diana Benea

Assistant Professor of English and American Studies

BA, University of Bucharest, 2008
MA, University of Bucharest, 2010
PhD, University of Bucharest, 2013
diana.benea@lls.unibuc.ro

Office hours: by appointment

COURSES TAUGHT

Contemporary Theatre: Representations of Crisis

BIO

Diana Benea is Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Bucharest, where she teaches self-designed courses in 20^th and 21^st century American literature, methodologies in cultural studies, and contemporary American theatre. Her publications include a monograph and book chapters on Thomas Pynchon’s works, as well as articles on contemporary theatre practices.

She was a visiting doctoral researcher at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin (2012) and a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the City University of New York—The Graduate Center (2017-2018), with a research project on the politics and aesthetics of community-based theatre in the US. She has been recently awarded a research fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies – The British Library (2020).

Her current research focuses on the theory, praxis, and pedagogy of theatre for social change, particularly documentary and community-based formats, in the US as well as the Romanian context.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Book

The Political Imagination of Thomas Pynchon’s Later Novels. Ars Docendi – University of Bucharest Press, 2017, 247 pages. ISBN 978-973-558-993-6.

Journal articles and book chapters

• “Thomas Pynchon.” Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020. Eds. Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen Burn, and Lesley Larkin. Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming. ISBN13 9781119431718; ISBN10 1119431719.

• “Representing the Roma Experience on the Contemporary Romanian Stage: The Intersectional Lenses of Giuvlipen’s Anti-Racist and Feminist Theatre Works.” The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race. [part of the Palgrave Handbooks series]. Eds. Tiziana Morosetti and Osita Okagbue. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. pp. 101-120. ISBN: 978-3-030-43956-9.

• “Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018).” American Dramaturgies for the 21^st Century. [part of the e-Theatrum mundi series]. Ed. Julie Vatain-Corfdir. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2021. pp. 219 – 244. ISBN 979-10-231-1793-6.

• “‘What’s in a Name?’ The Institutionalization of American Studies in Romania.” Ad Americam: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 21 (2020), special issue on the development of American, Canadian, and Latin American Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Institute of American Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. ISSN: 1896-9461. pp. 31 – 48.

• “Thomas Pynchon’s Hybrid California(s): In Search of Spatial/Social Justice in Inherent Vice.” A Dark California: Essays on Dystopian Depictions in Popular Culture. Eds. Agata Zarzycka and Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017. pp. 139 – 152. Print ISBN: 978-1-4766-6783-6. Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4766-2959-9.

• “’Turning Setbacks into Comebacks’: Representing Disability in Ping Chong’s Inside/ Out . . . Voices from the Disability Community.” B.A.S – British and American Studies XXIII, Timisoara: West University Press, 2017. pp. 109 – 121. ISSN 1224 – 3086.

• “Negotiating the Quandaries of Post-9/11 Pakistani American Identity in Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced.” Moravian Journal of Literature and Film 6.2 (Fall 2015).Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacky University Press. pp. 51 – 66. ISSN 1803-7720.

• “Visions of Community in Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland.” Embracing Multitudes of Meaning. Ed. M. Burada, R. Sinu, O. Tatu. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. pp. 352 – 370. ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7060-3. [ISI Web of Science – Proceedings].

• “Spaces of Native American Ghostliness in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon.” Placing America: American Culture and Its Spaces. Eds. Michael Fuchs and Maria-Theresia Holub. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2013. pp. 161–171. ISBN 978-3-8376-2080-1. [ISI Web of Science – Proceedings].