Dr. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru

Associate Professor of English and American Studies
BA, University of Bucharest, 1994
MA, University of Bucharest, 1995
PhD, University of Bucharest, 2000
PhD, University of East Anglia, 2007
sabina.draga.alexandru@lls.unibuc.ro
Office hours: by appointment

COURSES TAUGHT

Narratives of Diasporic Identities

Postcolonial Inscribings: Indian Identities

BIO & PUBLICATIONS

Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Bucharest and, since 2015, an Associate of the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies at the University of Chicago. Her main research interests are: interactions between narrative, performance and alternative discourses in or outside the humanities, as reflected in contemporary global literatures in English; narrative, gender and politics in postcolonial and postsocialist studies; ethnic American literatures; East European/postsocialist studies; ecocriticism. She was the recipient of doctoral research scholarships at the University of Oxford (1997-1998), Central European University, Budapest (February-June, 1999), the University of Barcelona (August-October, 1999) and the University of East Anglia (2000-2003), two six-week scholarships for literary translators at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2007 and 2013) and a New Europe College postdoctoral fellowship (2020-2021). She was member of four UEFISCDI-funded research projects and director of a fifth one, Women’s Narratives of Transnational Relocation (2011-2013). She gave talks as invited speaker at the University of Chicago (May 2019), Washington and Lee University (March 2017) and the University of Southern Denmark (August 2005). She was editorial assistant of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2004-2010). She is member of several international professional organizations (among which the research group Ratnakara – Indian Ocean Literatures and Cultures and SARI – Société d´Activités et de Recherche sur le Monde Indien).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Authored books

Ecological Privacies: From Alternative Landscapes to Private Spaces of the Mind in Contemporary Women’s Writing (aprox. 300pp), Leiden and Boston: Brill (forthcoming 2024).
Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015.
Identity Performance in Contemporary Non-WASP American Fiction. București: Editura Universității din București, 2008.

Condiția postmodernă: spre o estetică a identităților culturale (The Postmodern Condition: Towards an Aesthetic of Cultural Identities). București: Editura Universității din București, 2003.

Edited volumes

Women’s Imaginary Cooking and Appetites across Cultures: Studies in Literature, Media and Film, co-edited with Dana Bădulescu and Florina Năstase (forthcoming 2024).
Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality. Co-edited with Dragoș Manea. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021.
Traduccions i diàlegs culturals amb el català. Co-edited with Mioara Adelina Angheluță, Oana-Dana Balaș, Joan Llinàs Suau and Xavier Montoliu Pauli. București: Editura Universității din București, 2018.
Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Transnational Relocation. Co-edited with Madalina Nicolaescu and Helen Smith. Vienna and Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2013.

Shakespeare, Translation and the European Dimension. Co-edited with Madalina Nicolaescu and Oana-Alis Zaharia. București: Pro Universitaria, 2012.
Postcolonialism/Postcommunism: Dictionary of Key Cultural Terms. Co-authored with Monica Bottez, Bogdan Ștefănescu, Ruxandra Rădulescu, Ruxandra Vișan and Alina Bottez. București: Editura Universității din București, 2011.
Postcolonialism/Postcommunism: Intersections and Overlaps. Co-edited with Monica Bottez and Bogdan Ștefănescu. București: Editura Universității din București, 2011.
Cultura românească în perspectivă transatlantică. Interviuri (Romanian Culture in Transatlantic Perspective. Interviews). Co-edited with Teodora Șerban-Oprescu.București: Editura Universității din București, 2009.

Women’s Voices in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Co-edited with Madalina Nicolaescu and Helen Smith. Volume I: Rewriting Histories. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2005. Volume II: Bodies and Representations. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2006.

Journal articles

‘An Unconstructable Indian Ocean: Amitav Ghosh’s Ecological Imaginary in Sea of Poppies and The Great Derangement”, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses No 82/2021, DOI: https://doi.org/10.25145/j.recaesin.2021.82.
‘A Sea of Violence and Love: Precarity, Eco-Fiction and the American Factor in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide’, Angles: New Perspectives on the Anglophone World. 10 iulie 2019. https://angles.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=2015.
‘Care drain and substitute mothering in women’s documentary film: Towards a transnational family model?’, Journal of European Studies 48(3–4) 2018. 1–15.
‘Global Rhetorics of Disaster: Media Constructions of Bataclan and the “Colectiv Revolution” in the Wake of 9/11’. ESSACHESS. Journal for Communication Studies, vol. 10, no. 1(19)/ 2017: 129-144.
‘Routes beyond Roots: Alternative Ecological Histories in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies’. Indialogs Vol. 4, 2017: 37-50.
§ “Transatlantic Translations as Identity Mediating Discourses”. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 20(3), 2012. 1-15.
‘Performance, Performativity and Nomadism in Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain’, Comparative Literature Studies 45.1, 2008, pp. 23-39.
‘Alternatives to the Novel Form: Oral Storytelling and Internet Patterns in Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 43.3, 2008, pp. 45-60.
‘Urban and Rural Narratives of Female Relocation in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Novels Queen of Dreams and The Mistress of Spices’, American, British and Canadian Studies 19, Dec. 2012. 77-86.
‘Narrative and Discursive Games: Translating the Postcolonial into the Postcommunist’, American, British and Canadian Studies 17, Dec. 2011, pp. 12-22.
‘Textualities outside the Text: Music and the Performance of Englishness in Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music’. Textus: English Studies in Italy, 23.2, 2010. 453-468.
‘Performative Symbols and Structures in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things’. Commonwealth Essays and Studies 31.2, 2009. 62-77.
‘Love as Reclamation in Toni Morrison’s African American Rhetoric’, European Journal of American Culture 27.3, 2008, pp. 191-205.

Book chapters

‘How to Fight Historical Violence: Posthuman Spirituality in Cloud Atlas’. În Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru și Dragoș Manea (ed.), Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality (vol. 17 în seria SART – Studies in Religion and the Arts), Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021, pp. 158-179.
‘From Travelling Memoir to Nomadic Narrative in Kapka Kassabova’s Street Without a Name and Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story’, in Jasmina Lukic, Sibelan Forrester and Borbala Farago (eds.), Times of Mobility: Transnational Literature and Gender in Translation. Budapest: CEU Press, 2019. 202-218.
‘Métamorphoses de l’image afro-américaine dans God Help the Child de Toni Morrison : Une reponse non-violente à la violence’ , In Madhu Benoit and Jean-Pierre Benoit (eds.), Non-violence: combats d’hier et de demain, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2017. 83-95.
‘Community Ruptures: Individual Refashionings of Postcolonial Diasporic Life in Hanif Kureishi’s Something to Tell You’. Heritage and Ruptures in Indian Literature, Culture and Cinema. Eds. Cornelius Crowley, Geetha Ganapathy-Doré and Michel Naumann. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. 39-52.
‘Media-Filtered Street Justice: New York and the 21^st Century Nomadic Ethical Turn’. America: Justice, Conflict, War. Eds. Amanda Gilroy and Marietta Messmer. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2016. 205-2016.
‘Narrative Exploration against Mentality Issues: Indirect Education for Multiculturalism in Tintin’. Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels. Eds. Ian Hague and Carolene Ayaka. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. 163-176.
‘Nomadic Textualities: Time, Space and Narrative in M.G. Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Song and Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain’. Antonia Navarro-Tejero and Taniya Gupta (eds.). India in Canada, Canada in India. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. 48-55.
‘Provincialising London in Vikram Chandra’s Novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain’. India and the Diasporic Imagination. Eds. Rita Christian and Judith Misrahi-Barak. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2011. 149-163.
‘Shakespeare Goes Bollywood: Adaptation and Gender in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool and Omkara’. (In)Hospitable Translations: Fidelities, Betrayals, Rewritings. Eds. Madalina Nicolaescu and Sorana Corneanu. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2010. 189-199.
‘Fictions of History: Subaltern Traces in Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal’. Regards croisés dans la mondialisation: Les représentations de l’alterité après la colonisation. Eds. Cécile Girardin et Arkiya Touadi (în seria Discours identitaires dans la mondialisation, coordonată de Michel Naumann). Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009. 131-141.

Links

“A Sea of Violence and Love: Precarity, Eco-Fiction and the American Factor in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide” https://angles.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=2015

“Care drain and substitute mothering in women’s documentary film: Towards a transnational family model?”

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0047244118796090

“Routes Beyond Roots: Alternative Ecological Histories in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies”

http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/indialogs.78

“Global Rhetorics of Disaster: Media Constructions of Bataclan and the “Colectiv Revolution” in the Wake of 9/11” https://www.essachess.com/index.php/jcs/article/view/373/410

Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality

https://brill.com/view/title/56835?language=en

Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English

https://brill.com/view/title/31669?language=en

“Transatlantic Translations as Identity Mediating Discourses”

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0907676X.2012.702399

Postcolonialism/Postcommunism: Intersections and Overlaps