Articles by Oana Popescu-Sandu
Slavic and East European Journal, 2020
In a 1998 speech Katherine Verdery argued that "[t]he formerly socialist societies of Eastern Eur... more In a 1998 speech Katherine Verdery argued that "[t]he formerly socialist societies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union offer an unusual point of departure for considering the mutual interaction of transnationalizing and localizing processes." (291) As the articles in this cluster show, the former post socialist space still provides insight into such processes, especially since "research focusing on the local [...] demonstrates the continuing importance of individual agency, local knowledge, and cultural practices" (Khagram and Levitt 4). This cluster approaches the process of shaping identities locally and transnationally during and after the Cold War in an interdisciplinary, multidi-rectional way, across time and space, genres and disciplines. While different dominant narratives described the region as solidly separated by a physical and ideological Iron Curtain during the Cold War, or as "stuck in-between" (Komska 8-9) after the Cold War, transnational interactions at the local, regional and international level were always present. Kom-ska points to the constant urge to fixate the region into its geographical coordinates by its name-Eastern or Central Europe. This attempt to contain "occurs at the expense of highlighting the area's connections to other spaces, real and symbolic" (1). The countries in the communist bloc engaged in conversation and exchange with their neighbors and with ideological friends and foes, in official and unofficial ways. This cluster highlights these exchanges, especially in the postsocialist period, by looking at a diverse range of texts through the lenses of literary and cultural studies. The articles analyze how the circulation of people and cultural artifacts becomes a way of working and conceptualizing through difficult historical moments and often creates counter-histories and alternatives to dominant narratives. They also highlight the need for deeply engaging the local, descriptively and analytically, in order
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Slavic and East European Journal , 2020
In August 2017 Amazon released an original series entitled Comrade Detective. In their introducti... more In August 2017 Amazon released an original series entitled Comrade Detective. In their introduction, the producers maintained that the series was produced in the 1980s Romania and they recovered, restored, dubbed, and released it for American and international audiences. This and other production choices, including using dubbing as translation, bring into discussion American nostalgia for the Cold War political status quo, in the context of current ideological uncertainty. This chapter argues that Comrade Detective offers for consumption an object of ironic nostalgia that is speaking both to the Cold War past, its propaganda mechanisms, and its veiling of historical truths, as well as to the present, and its more chaotic power and influence structure. These past and present are joined, like superimposed photos, in the process of dubbing, that hides one voice--the minor Romanian one--while foregrounding the American narrative. Comrade Detective engages with nostalgia that leads to the creation of an object, a fantasy of adaptation, where the original is the translation. The series creates the original it desires and then speaks back at it.
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Twentieth-Century Literature, 2019
In her transnational plays Lenin's Shoe (2010) and Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (2010), Roman... more In her transnational plays Lenin's Shoe (2010) and Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (2010), Romanian American playwright Saviana Stănescu explores discourses of capitalist market economies, democracy, postsocialism, and gender that overlie the geographies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the United States. Staging these discourses predominately by way of the embodied performances of US migrant women from Eastern Europe, Stănescu's plays raise questions about the relationship between (post)socialist nations and the United States, and about the attendant ideologies of socialism and capitalism in the post-9/11 moment. These female characters drive change as well as navigate it, showing that gender is central to the creation, embodiment, and performance of knowledge. The focus on women protagonists as primary producers of a transnational knowledge-one that bridges US and (post)socialist histories-counters the idea that postsocialism, and especially postsocialist feminism, has remained invisible in the West, where Eastern Europe is assumed to be in the process of becoming like the West rather than representing an inherently different space, with its own set of (post)socialist knowledge.
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Journal of World Literature, 2018
This essay examines how translingual poetry by immigrant Romanian writers who live in or travel t... more This essay examines how translingual poetry by immigrant Romanian writers who live in or travel to the United States requires a transnational community framing rather than a national one and raises new questions about cultural and linguistic identity formation that reflect on both national and world literature issues. This analysis of the Romanian-American contemporary poets Mihaela Moscaliuc, Andrei Guruianu, Claudia Serea, and Aura Maru uses literary and rhetorical translingual theory to show that the “national literature” framing is no longer sufficient to address works created between two languages in a globalized world—Romanian and English, in this case. Born between two cultures and languages, their poetry does not belong entirely to either. In its turn, the national framing—both the Romanian and the American one—can become more porous and inclusive if read through a sociolinguistic “regime of mobility” lens that gives a more powerful voice to migrant writers.
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Journal of European Studies , Apr 2014
The article examines the Romanian and American reception of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 weeks, 3 months, ... more The article examines the Romanian and American reception of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 weeks, 3 months, 2 weeks (2007), arguing that the film’s representational minimalism indirectly caused an excess of interpretation across cultural contexts. This overinterpretation was possible because the film’s aesthetic minimalism encouraged viewers to decode the story through the lens of their own cultural and political predispositions. The historical and social background against which American viewers consumed this story of an illegal abortion during communism shaped its meaning (and perceptions about its political relevance), plugging a rather obscure art-house Romanian film into the larger national debate over reproductive rights in contemporary United States. Thus, in its transition from the domestic to global marketplace, 432 was transformed from an act of amoral probing of the Romanian individual and collective memory about communism into a film about the controversial nature of particular individual choices, within the liberal capitalist paradigm.
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Book chapters by Oana Popescu-Sandu
Theatres of War: Contemporary Perspectives, 2021
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Genre and the (Post) Communist Woman Analyzing Transformations of the Central and Eastern European Female Ideal Edited by Florentina C.Andreescu, Michael J. Shapiro, Sep 30, 2014
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Book Reviews by Oana Popescu-Sandu
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Conference Presentations by Oana Popescu-Sandu
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Articles by Oana Popescu-Sandu
Book chapters by Oana Popescu-Sandu
Book Reviews by Oana Popescu-Sandu
Conference Presentations by Oana Popescu-Sandu
Keywords: Cristian Mungiu, Romania, United States, abortion, film, new wave, realism, reception, communism, memory.
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Plays about global issues, including terrorism and war, are increasing in attention from playwrights, scholars, critics and audiences. In this contemporary collection, a gathering of diverse contributors explain theatre's special ability to generate dialogue and promote healing when dealing with human tragedy.
This collection discusses over 30 international plays and case studies from different time periods, all set in a backdrop of war. The four sections document British and American perspectives on theatres of war, global perspectives on theatres of war, perspectives on Black Watch and, finally, perspectives on The Great Game: Afghanistan. Through this, a range of international scholars from different disciplines imaginatively rethink theatre's unique ability to mediate the impacts and experiences of war.
Featuring contributions from a variety of perspectives, this book provides a wealth of revealing insights into why authors and audiences have always turned to the unique medium of theatre to make sense of war.