Exploring Other Worlds: The United States and Its Others
American Studies Student Conference
March 10-11, 2020
Tuesday, March 10, 2020, 9:00-19:00
Venue: The Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission, 2 Nicolae Costinescu St., Bucharest
9:00-10:00 Opening of the Conference
Octavian Roske (Assoc. Prof., Head of the English Department, University of Bucharest)
Mircea Dumitru (Executive Director, Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission)
Andrew Greenough (Economic Officer, United States Embassy in Bucharest) – Opening talk: “Promoting Inclusion and Representation in the U.S. Political System”
10:00-11:30 Panel 1: Film and Television
1. Monica Matei (University of Bucharest): “Contemporary African American Outlaw & Heroic Figures in The Boondocks”
2. Oana Ciobanu (University of Bucharest): “‘Survivors’ of the Holocaust: The Cynical Mass Media Adaptation of Jewish Otherness in Curb Your Enthusiasm”
3. Ionuț-Șerban Lucaș (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi): “Simulacra in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
4. Alex Bojneagu (West University of Timișoara): “Stuck In-between Two Worlds. Michael Corleone’s Double Tragedy”
5. Teodora Marin (University of Bucharest): “Exploring the Transcultural Animated Film Adaptation The Princess and the Frog”
11:30-11:45 Coffee break
11:45-13:15 Panel 2: Fiction
1. Raluca Merian (University of Bucharest): “Exploring Witchcraft as a Space of Otherness in Esther Forbes’ A Mirror for Witches (1928)”
2. Robert Enescu (Ovidius University, Constanța): Getting Lost in the Crowd: A Thematic Analysis of Don DeLillo’s White Noise”
3. Ruxandra Gîdei (University of Bucharest): “The Other Beatniks: Beating Masculinist Discourse in Joyce Johnson’s Come and Join the Dance”
4. Martina Proietti (Ovidius University, Constanța): “Ethnic Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel The Namesake”
5. Elena Mincu (University of Bucharest): “Visual Literature of Disease and Feminine Madness: the Change of the Distressed Second Sex for the Price of Male Sensitivity in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’”
13:15-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-15:15 Panel 3: Cultural Studies/History
1. David Dumitriu (University of Bucharest): “Countercultures of Subversion. A Look at How Hardcore Punk and Black Metal Have Attempted to Subvert Mainstream or Popular Beliefs and Idea(l)s”
2. Andreea Moise (University of Bucharest): “The Female Other: Mansplaining, Manspreading and Rape Culture in the Digital Era of Fourth-Wave Feminism”
3. Iulia Salcă (Transilvania University of Brașov): “Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal Surface Coal Mining on Appalachian Communities”
4. Jacob A. Bruggeman (Miami University of Ohio/ University of Cambridge): “Masters of Capital and Men on the Street: Making America’s Economic Others in the Gilded Age, 1870-1900”
15:15-15:30 Coffee break
15:30-16:45 Panel 4: Drama, Comics, Architecture and Lit
1. Alp Kayhan (Ovidius University, Constanța): “Reflections of the American Dream in August Wilson’s Fences”
2. Bianca Stoian (University of Bucharest): “Old Ideas, New Utopias in Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (2018)”
3. Iliana Dumitrescu (University of Bucharest): “Indigenizing the Native: Marvel’s Red Wolf between Entertainment and Statement”
4. Iris Knieling (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi): “Otherness in the American Modern Architecture and Literature”
16:45-17:00 Coffee break
17:00-18:15 Panel 5: Poetry
1. Ana Dragnea (University of Bucharest): “Poetic Persona(s), Intimacy and Worldview in Emily Dickinson’s Crafted Universe”
2. Ana Soviany (University of Bucharest): “The Synesthetic Experience of Self in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself ”
3. Raul Săran (West University of Timișoara): “From Andrei Codrescu to Barbara Jane Reyes – Exploring ‘the Other’ in 21st Century American Immigrant Poetry”
4. Vasile Gribincea (University of Bucharest): “Traumatic Identities and Reverberations of the Holocaust in Paul Celan’s Todesfuge and Sylvia Plath’s Daddy and Lady Lazarus: Towards an Intertextual ‘Mirroring’”
18:15-18:30 Coffee break
18:30-19:00 “Dan Grigorescu” prize award ceremony. Closing remarks.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Venue: Council Hall, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest,
7-13 Pitar Moș St., Bucharest
12:00-14:00 Keynote lecture
Cristina Stanciu, Fulbright scholar, Virginia Commonwealth University/ “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași: “Where Are the Children?” The Legacy of Residential Schools in Native North American
Literature and Culture
