Titlu proiect / Project Title: Naratiuni ale femeilor in situatii de relocare transnationala / Women’s Narratives of Transnational Relocation
Sursa de finantare / Financing: UEFISCDI, prin programul national de cercetare, PN-II-RU-TE, competitia Tinere Echipe din anul 2011 / National Council for Scientific Research – PN-II-RU-TE Programme, 2011 annual competition.
Durata proiectului / Project Duration: 2 ani (octombrie 2011 – septembrie 2013) / 2 years (October 2011 – September 2013).
Membrii proiectului / Project Members:
Conf. dr. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru – director
Prof. dr. Madalina Nicolaescu
Lect. dr. Mihaela Precup
Lect. dr. Dana Mihailescu
Drd. Diana Benea
Rezumat – obiective si activitati / Project summary – objectives and activities:
The field of our research project is cross-disciplinary and is constituted at the intersection of globalization studies (focusing on the cutting edge of transnational migration), gender studies, studies in the new media and literary studies. The starting point is a publication edited by two members of this team (Women’s Voices in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, eds. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, Madalina Nicolaescu and Helen Smith, Vol. I, Rewriting Histories, 2005 and Vol. II, Bodies and Representations, 2006), which at the time filled a gap Eastern European countries had in the knowledge about each other’s literatures written by women recovering from communist trauma and rewriting its histories. The two volumes became internationally visible very quickly, entering the collections of prestigious university libraries abroad and being reviewed in the ISI journal Comparative Literature Studies (45.2, 2008, pp. 261-263). The present project aims to continue along those lines and study narratives by and about women engaged in temporary and permanent transnational relocation after the fall of communism, under the impact of globalization and identity-reconfiguration phenomena such as EU-enlargement.
We will explore a new paradigm of transnational migration that displaces previous theorization based on linear, margin-to-centre movement and insists on multiple connectivities and translocal allegiances. This implies both integration in the host society and the temporary and/or partial movement back home, currently facilitated by progress in means of transport and of communication. As the conditions of migrant life are changing, the strategies of overcoming the trauma of translocation are also unexpected: the attempt to fully recreate one’s culture into a new space to the point of resisting new cultural norms, while transnational connections enabled by new technologies of communication stress the disolution of family ties instead of reinforcing them. In this context, gender has increasingly been identified as a key category to transnational migration, to the constitution of transnational subjectivities, identities and communities and to pressing issues such as transnational families and mothering. Whereas most of the current studies engage with issues confronting Asian or Latin American migrant women, the recent massive flow of East European women to Western European countries and/or the USA has been largely understudied.
Our project aims to cover this insufficiently visible space through a contrastive analysis between narratives which have taken the form of acknowledged, published books and informal (discursive or non-discursive) narratives disseminated by the new media and in digital form.
Publicaţii în cadrul proiectului / Publications
2013
Draga Alexandru, Maria-Sabina and Madalina Nicolaescu, eds. Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Migration in the New Millennium. Berlin: LIT Verlag (Contributions to Transnational Feminisms series), 2013. 304 pages. ISBN 978-3-643-90448-9 [Table of contents] [Publication date note] Link to publisher’s site
Dana Mihailescu. “Being Off-Track: Returns to Post-Communist Spaces and Transits around the U.S. as Fertile Acts of Dislocation in Svetlana Boym’s Works.” Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Migration in the New Millennium. Eds. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, Mădălina Nicolaescu, Helen Smith. Graz: Lit Verlag (Contributions to Transnational Feminism Series), 2013. 211-227.
Madalina Nicolaescu. “Romanian Women’s Success Stories as Transnational Migrants.” Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Migration in the New Millennium. Eds. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, Mădălina Nicolaescu, Helen Smith. Graz: Lit Verlag (Contributions to Transnational Feminism Series), 2013.
Mihaela Precup. “Felines and Females on the Fringe: Femininity and Dislocation in Nina Bunjevac’s Heartless.”Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Migration in the New Millennium. Eds. Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, Mădălina Nicolaescu, Helen Smith. Graz: Lit Verlag (Contributions to Transnational Feminism Series), 2013.
Dana Mihailescu. “Children’s Erratic Memories of the Holocaust: On Cross-Cutting Exchanges in Exhibitions and Visual Projects about Child Survivors and Children of Survivors.” Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review (Special Issue on Children, November 2013): 93-108. <http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/publicationdetails.aspx?publicationid=ead63137-e2d3-4efe-bc3f-9bdf32e742f4>. ISSN: 1224-6271.
Mihaela Precup. “Children, Heroes, and Foes in a Communist Family Album.” Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review (Special Issue on Children, November 2013): 19-33. <http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/publicationdetails.aspx?publicationid=ead63137-e2d3-4efe-bc3f-9bdf32e742f4>. ISSN: 1224-6271.
Dana Mihailescu. “Photography and Prose Pictures in Beloved: The Frames of Emotional Memory.” Toni Morrison – Au-delà du visible ordinaire / Toni Morrison – Beyond the Ordinary Visible. Eds. Maryemma Graham, Janis Mayes and Andrée-Anne Kekeh. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, forthcoming 2014.
Draga Alexandru, Maria-Sabina. “From Travelling Memoir to Nomadic Narrative in Kapka Kassabova’s Street without a Name and Twelve Minutes of Love: A Tango Story.” In Women’s Transnational Literatures in Europe, eds. Jasmina Lukic and Borbala Farago, Budapest: CEU Press (forthcoming 2014).
Nicolaescu, Madalina. “De-centering Narratives of Success.” In Women’s Transnational Literatures in Europe, eds. Jasmina Lukic and Borbala Farago, Budapest: CEU Press (forthcoming 2014).
2012
Draga Alexandru, Maria-Sabina. “Nomadic Textualities: Time, Space and Narrative in M.G. Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Song and Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth and Pouring Rain.” India in Canada, Canada in India, ed. Antonia Navarro si Taniya Gupta, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. 48-55. ISBN: 978-1-4438-4826-8
Draga Alexandru, Maria-Sabina. “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, no. 19 (Dec. 2012). ISSN 1841-1487 (Print) si ISSN 1841-964X (Online)
Mihăilescu, Dana. “The Legacy of Communism through a Child’s Lens: The Thrusts of Emotional Knowledge out of Marzi’s Poland.” Literary and Visual Dimensions of Contemporary Graphic Narratives. Eds. Mária Kiššová and Simona Hevešiová. Nitra: Constantine the Philosopher University Press, 2012. 45-75. ISBN: 978-80-558-0099-8.
Conferinţe organizate în cadrul proiectului / Conferences organized within our project
Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Migration in the New Millennium
21-22 September, 2012
Universitatea din București
American Studies Center
Str Pitar Mos 7-13, Room 4
This conference is organized as part of the project Women’s Narratives of Transnational Relocation (PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0159).
Conference Program
Friday, September 21, 2012
9:30-10:00 Registration and Coffee
10:00-10:15 Welcome and Short Description of the Project
10:15-11:30 Keynote Lecture 1:
Jasmina Lukic (Central European University, Budapest), “Migrant Women’s Literature in Transnational Perspective”
11:30-13:30 Session 1: Migration, Gender Roles and Stories of Success and Failure
Chair: Jasmina Lukic
Simona Fojtová (Transylvania University in Lexington), “East-European Women’s Stories of Agency in Sex Work Migration”
Mădălina Nicolaescu (University of Bucharest), “Romanian Women’s Success Stories of Migration”
Francesca Alice Vianello (University of Padua), “Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian Transnational Families through Women’s Eyes”
Bernadetta Siara (City University London), “Between ‘Escape’ and New Opportunities: Migration Narratives of Polish Women in the UK”
13:30-14:30 Lunch
14:30-16:30 Session 2: Transnationalism and Diversity in Women’s Migration
Chair: Mădălina Nicolaescu
Milica Antić Gaber (University of Ljubljana), “On Their way to the ‘Room of Their Own’: Women Making and Shaping Their Own Destiny”
Cristina Bezzi (Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, Rovereto), “Not Only ‘Caregivers’”
Elena Stoican (University of Bucharest), “Linear Transnationalism in Vesna Goldsworthy and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction”
Aija Lulle (University of Latvia), “Migrants, Beauties and Eastern Countrywomen: Gendered Constructions of Latvians in Guernsey”
16:30-17:00 Coffee Break
17:00-19:00 Session 3: Between Fiction and Memoir in Women’s Relocation Narratives
Chair: Dana Mihăilescu
Priscilla Morris (University of East Anglia), “The Painter of Bridges: A Sarajevo Story. Transnational Family History and Women’s Migration Narratives in a Siege-Exile Novel”
Dina Copelman (George Mason University), “Family Fragments, Fragmented Families: The Intersections of Subjectivities and Histories”
Polina Shvanyukova (University of Bergamo), “From Albania via Switzerland to the United States: Elvira Dones’s Journey through Personal Memory and Collective History”
Borbala Farago (Central European University), “Migrant Poet(h)ics”
Saturday, September 22, 2012
10:00-10:15 Registration and Coffee
10:15-11:30 Keynote Lecture 2:
Silvia Schultermandl (University of Graz), “Transnational Sensibility in Feminist Theory and Practice”
11:30-13:30 Session 4: Creative Dislocations in Women’s Migration Narratives
Chair: Silvia Schultermandl
Cristina Chevereşan (The West University of Timişoara), “‘We Are All Foreign Here’: Stories of Re/Dis-Location in Ioana Baetica Morpurgo’s Imigranţii”
Dana Mihăilescu (University of Bucharest), “Being Off-Track: Returns to Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Transits around the U.S. as Fertile Acts of Dislocation in Svetlana Boym’s Works”
Mihaela Precup (University of Bucharest), “Felines and Females on the Fringe: Femininity and Dislocation in Nina Bunjevac’s Heartless”
Věra Eliášová (Masaryk University, Brno), “Pages Torn Off: Narratives of Urban Mobility by Contemporary East and Central European Women Writers”
13:30-14:30 Lunch
14:30-16:30 Session 5: Conflict, War Stories and Transnational Mobility in Women’s Migration
Chair: Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru
Andra-Dina Pană (independent researcher), “Mediated Transnationalism. Cases of Women’s Involvement in Transnationalism”
Zorica Mrsevic (Institute of Social Science, Belgrade), “War Experiences of Women/ Oral Histories”
Aleksandra Batuchina Ro�nova (Klaipeda University), “The Link between the Social State of the Sending Society and Women’s Migration in Lithuania”
Alissa Tolstokorova (International School of Equal Opportunities, Kyiv), “One Way Ticket? International Labour Mobility of Ukrainian Women”
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
17:00-19:00 Session 6: Relocation as Reinvention of the Self
Chair: Mihaela Precup
Diana Benea (University of Bucharest), “‘People move there so light and shameless that they almost touch the sky’: Walking in the City in Herta Müller’s Traveling on One Leg”
Monica Manolachi (University of Bucharest),“Cultural Tractors and Gender Roles in Marina Lewycka’s Debut Novel”
Catalina Botez (University of Constance), “Transformative East-West Journeys: Mapping the Transnational in Domnica Radulescu’s Train to Trieste”
Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru (University of Bucharest), “Nomadic Identity Narratives and Female Bonding in Domnica Radulescu’s Black Sea Twilight”
19:15 Conference Dinner (Lente & Cafea, Str. Gen. Praporgescu no 31, Bucharest)
Sesiune MLA Chicago 2014 / 2014 MLA Chicago Session — organizator / organizer Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru:
