Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania

Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania PDF Author: Simona Mitroiu
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110766531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book analyzes the impact of abusive regimes of power on women’s lives and on their self-expression through close readings of life writing by women in communist Romania. In particular, it examines the forms of agency and privacy available to women under totalitarianism and the modes of relationships in which their lives were embedded. The self-expression and self-reflexive processes that are to be found in the body of Romanian women’s autobiographical writings this study presents create complex private narratives that underpin the creative development of inclusive memories of the past through shared responsibility and shared agency. At the same time, however, the way these private, personal narratives intertwined with collective and official historical narratives exemplifies the multidimensional nature of privacy as well as the radical redefinition of agency in this period. This book argues for a broader understanding of the narratives of the communist past, one that reflects the complexity of individual and social interactions and allows a deep exploration of the interconnected relations between memory, trauma, nostalgia, agency, and privacy.

Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania

Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania PDF Author: Simona Mitroiu
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110766531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book analyzes the impact of abusive regimes of power on women’s lives and on their self-expression through close readings of life writing by women in communist Romania. In particular, it examines the forms of agency and privacy available to women under totalitarianism and the modes of relationships in which their lives were embedded. The self-expression and self-reflexive processes that are to be found in the body of Romanian women’s autobiographical writings this study presents create complex private narratives that underpin the creative development of inclusive memories of the past through shared responsibility and shared agency. At the same time, however, the way these private, personal narratives intertwined with collective and official historical narratives exemplifies the multidimensional nature of privacy as well as the radical redefinition of agency in this period. This book argues for a broader understanding of the narratives of the communist past, one that reflects the complexity of individual and social interactions and allows a deep exploration of the interconnected relations between memory, trauma, nostalgia, agency, and privacy.

The Legacies of Soviet Repression and Displacement

The Legacies of Soviet Repression and Displacement PDF Author: Samira Saramo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000893014
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book explores the ways in which memories of Stalin-era repression and displacement manifest across times and places through diverse forms of materialization. The chapters of the book explore the concrete mobilities of life stories, letters, memoirs, literature, objects, and bodies reflecting Soviet repression and violence across borders of geographical locations, historical periods, and affective landscapes. These spatial, temporal, and psychological shifts are explored further as processes of textual circulation and mediation. By offering novel multi-sited and multi-media analyses of the creative, political, societal, cultural, and intimate implications of remembrance, the collection contributes fresh interdisciplinary perspectives to both the field of memory studies and the study of Soviet repression. The case studies in this collection focus on the personal, autobiographical, and intimate representations, experiences, and practices related to the remembrance of Stalinist repression and displacement as they are mediated through memoirs, fiction, interviews, and versatile commemorative practices. Taken together, the book asks: what happens to memories, life stories, testimonies, and experiences when they travel in time and space and between media and are (re)interpreted and (re)formulated through these transfers? What kinds of memorial forms are gained through processes of mediation? What types of spaces for remembering, telling, and feeling are created, negotiated, and contested through these shifts? What are the boundaries and intersections of intimate, familial, community, national, and transnational memories? By analytically contextualizing the various case studies within broader memory discourses in a range of geographical and political contexts, the book offers rich and multilayered interpretations of the enduring ramifications of communist repression. The collection demonstrates that these multiply moving memories not only reflect Eastern European memory culture but also reach far beyond and have transnational and transgenerational significance. As such, this timely book will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the former Soviet Union or memory studies more broadly.

Bottled Goods

Bottled Goods PDF Author: Sophie Van Llewyn
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062979531
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize, this poignant, lyrical novel is set in 1970s Romania during Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime—and depicts childhood, marriage, family, and identity in the face of extreme obstacles. Alina yearns for freedom. She and her husband Liviu are teachers in their twenties, living under the repressive regime of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in the Socialist Republic of Romania in the 1970s. But after her brother-in-law defects, Alina and Liviu fall under suspicion and surveillance, and their lives are suddenly turned upside down—just like the glasses in her superstitious Aunt Theresa's house that are used to ward off evil spirits. But Alina's evil spirits are more corporeal: a suffocating, manipulative mother; a student who accuses her; and a menacing Secret Services agent who makes one-too-many visits. As the couple continues to be harassed, their marriage soon deteriorates. With the government watching—and most likely listening— escape seems impossible . . . until Alina’s mystical aunt proposes a surprising solution to reduce her problems to a manageable size. Weaving elements of magic realism, Romanian folklore, and Kafkaesque paranoia into a gritty and moving depiction of one woman's struggle for personal and political freedom, Bottled Goods is written in short bursts of “flash fiction” and explores universal themes of empowerment, liberty, family, and loyalty.

Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe

Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe PDF Author: Simona Mitroiu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319968335
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This volume explores the different mechanisms and forms of expression used by women to come to terms with the past, focusing on the variety and complexity of women’s narratives of displacement within the context of Central and Eastern Europe. The first part addresses the quest for personal (post)memory from the perspective of the second and third generations. The touching collaboration established in reconstructing individual and family (post)memories offers invaluable insights into the effects of displacement, coping mechanisms, and resilience. Adopting the idea that the text itself becomes a site of (post)memory, the second part of the volume brings into discussion different sites and develops further this topic in relation to the creative process and visual text. The last part questions the past in relation to trauma and identity displacement in the countries where abusive regimes destroyed social bonds and had a lasting impact on the people lives.

Post-Communist Romania at Twenty-Five

Post-Communist Romania at Twenty-Five PDF Author: Lavinia Stan
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498501109
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
2014 marked the 25th anniversary of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The events of 1989 are widely seen as having ushered in new all-encompassing reforms in almost all areas of life. In few other places were reforms more contested and divisive than in Romania, a country that suffered greatly under the sultanistic-cum-totalitarian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, faced the region’s only bloody anti-communist revolt, and as such had the longest to travel on the road from communism to democracy. We now have a generation’s worth of experience with these wrenching reforms that have deeply affected Romania’s political institutions and political culture, and ultimately allowed it to become a member of the coveted European Union club. This volume gathers key lessons for democratic theory and practice from Romania’s first twenty-five years of post-communist transformation. Written by leading experts in the field of Romanian Studies, the chapters focus on the most important factors that have shaped the country’s political transformation during the first 25 years of post-communism.

Advertising, Sex, and Post-Socialism

Advertising, Sex, and Post-Socialism PDF Author: Elza Ibroscheva
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739172670
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Advertising, Sex, and Post-Socialism explores the role of advertising and the consumption it promotes in changing cultural perceptions of sex and femininity across the Balkan region. Elza Ibroscheva theorizes how the marketing of gender identities that has taken place in the years of post-socialist transition has fundamentally affected the social, economic, and political positioning of women. Advertising is one of the major “factories” of cultural signification, and as such, serves as the most ubiquitous vessel of global norms of gendered selves. In addition, advertising serves as a literacy tool for learning the grammar of consumption, studying the ideologies of femininity and sex before and after the collapse of the socialist project, as well as the prevailing portrayals of femininity in advertising in present day Bulgaria. This book provides a revealing look at the mechanisms of how post-socialist norms of sexual behavior are being engendered, and what role media play in this transformative process.

Fragmented Identities

Fragmented Identities PDF Author: Denise Roman
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739121184
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Combining sharp observation, a native's ease in the city, and talent as a storyteller, Denise Roman spiritedly presents the myriad details and the diverging cultural strands of life in postcommunist Bucharest. Roman focuses on identity-formation and identity politics among youth, Jews, women, and queers.

Women and Gender in Postwar Europe

Women and Gender in Postwar Europe PDF Author: Joanna Regulska
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136454802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Women and Gender in Postwar Europe charts the experiences of women across Europe from 1945 to the present day. Europe at the end of World War II was a sorry testimony to the human condition; awash in corpses, the infrastructure devastated, food and fuel in such short supply. From Soviet Union to the United Kingdom and Ireland the vast majority of citizens on whom survival depended, in the postwar years, were women. This book charts the involvement of women in postwar reconstruction through the Cold War and post Cold-War years with chapters on the economic, social, and political dynamism that characterized Europe from the 1950s onwards, and goes on to look at the woman’s place in a rebuilt Europe that was both more prosperous and as tension-filled as before. The chapters both look at broad trends across both eastern and western Europe; such as the horrific aftermath of World War II, but also present individual case studies that illustrate those broad trends in the historical development of women’s lives and gender roles. The case studies show difference and diversity across Europe whilst also setting the experience of women in a particular country within the broader historical issues and trends, in such topics as work, professionalization, sexuality, consumerism, migration, and activism. The introduction and conclusion provide an overview that integrates the chapters into the more general history of this important period. This will be an essential resource for students of women and gender studies and for post 1945 courses.

An Anthology of Romanian Women Poets

An Anthology of Romanian Women Poets PDF Author: Kurt W Treptow
Publisher: Histria Books
ISBN: 1592112366
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Poetry has always been an essential aspect of cultural expression in Romania. One will find few countries where poetry has been such a force both culturally and politically. This volume fills an important gap as it is the first to attempt to present systematically some of the most important Romanian women poets of the past two centuries. For too long their contribution has been under-appreciated. This anthology is an effort to correct this oversight and to make their work known to an international audience. The selections in this volume represent several generations of poets, from Veronica Micle and Matilda Cugler-Poni in the nineteenth century, to Magda Isanos in the inter-war period, to such important contemporary poets as Ana Blandiana and Daniela Crasnaru, and younger poets such as Mariana Marin and Carmen Veronica Steiciuc.

Birth of Democratic Citizenship

Birth of Democratic Citizenship PDF Author: Maria Bucur-Deckard
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253038472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
What is it like to be a woman living through the transition from communism to democracy? What effect does this have on a woman's daily life, on her concept of herself, her family, and her community? Birth of Democratic Citizenship presents the stories of women in Romania as they describe their experiences on the journey to democratic citizenship. In candid and revealing conversations, women between the ages of 24 and 83 explain how they negotiated their way through radical political transitions that had a direct impact on their everyday lives. Women who grew up under communism explore how these ideologies influenced their ideas of marriage, career, and a woman's role in society. Younger generations explore how they interpret civic rights and whether they incorporate these rights into their relationships with their family and community. Beginning with an overview of the role women have played in Romania from the late 18th century to today, Birth of Democratic Citizenship explores how the contemporary experience of women in postsocialist countries developed. The women speak about their reliance on and negotiations with communities, ranging from family and neighbors to local and national political parties. Birth of Democratic Citizenship argues that that the success of democracy will largely rely on the equal incorporation of women in the political and civic development of Romania. In doing so, it encourages frank consideration of what modern democracy is and what it will need to be to succeed in the future.