Claudia Drăgănoiu obtained her B.A (majoring in Romanian literature, with a minor in French literature) at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, Romania, and continued with a M.A. in Romanian Literary Studies at the same institution.

For her PhD degree, Claudia chose a joint thesis supervision, between the University of Bucharest and the University of Strasbourg, France.

After defending her PhD thesis on exile literary prose in September 2011, Claudia continued her research on Romanian exile writers, this time in a transdisciplinary manner, with a comparative outlook, and joined the Center for Area Studies and the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature, at Freie Universität Berlin as a DRS-POINT fellow in May 2013.

Titel of research project:

Syncretism and acculturation in exile nationalist mythology – the case of the 20th century Romanian exiles

Focus of research:

Romanian exile literature 1945-1989

Keywords:

Exile intellectual production, diaspora, political myths, narratives of the homeland, transnationalism, acculturation

Regional focus:

Romania

Description:

This project focuses on the mutations suffered by the nationalist mythology of Romanian diaspora when exposed to the influence of the host culture, the objectives of the research being essentially threefold:

1) To examine how Romanian exiles preserve their ethnic and ideological identity by attempting to programmatically “reconstruct” their society of origin (in terms of social hierarchies, religious beliefs, re-enacting of political conflicts). The ‘exiles’ referred to here are mostly intellectuals who left the country right before or right after the installation of Communism. This particular focus group was chosen because of its importance in creating an ‘exile’ culture (they were writers, journalists, literary critics, historians, former members of the ‘nationalist’ generation of the 1930’-1940’ – who openly stated their goal was to keep alive Romania’s traditional values, since they had been corrupted, at home, by official propaganda).

2) To develop an “exile mythology” approach that goes beyond restating the nationalist agenda of the young Romanian intellectuals during the Interbellum and rather identifies a series of recurrent strategies mirroring the ones used by the Communist propaganda. Currently, the nationalist ideas that characterize exile intellectual production are considered a more or less exact copy of the ones adopted before the war by the young generation – a mixture of national pride and patriotism, with some sense of superiority (based on the purity of traditional practices and beliefs, uncorrupted by the modern society) and a strong conviction that the active return to Orthodoxism was the only salvation of the country’s spirituality.

3) To explore the effects of exposing this nationalist mythology to the host culture, looking into the mechanism of acculturation and arguing that the reluctance Romanians still show today towards the exiles comes from their different perception of the “home” as a cultural configuration of the idea of belonging.

Articles in academic Journals

Drăgănoiu, C. (2014, forthcoming): Représentations féminines dans la Trilogie de l’exil de Vintilă Horia [Feminine representations in Vintila Horia’s Trilogy of Exile]. Review of the National Library of Romania.

Drăgănoiu, C. (2014, forthcoming): Note pe marginea liricii romanesti de detentie [Notes on Romanian concentrationary poetry]. Review of the National Library of Romania.

Drăgănoiu, C. (2014): L'image de l'Autre dans La 25ème heure de C.V. Gheorghiu [The image of the Otherin C.V. Gheorghiu’s “The 25th Hour”]. ReCHERches no 11, University of Strasbourg. 91-99.

Drăgănoiu, C. (2012): Figuri ale exilului romantic romanesc [Personalities of Romanian romantic exile]. Review of the National Library of Romania. 65-68.

Drăgănoiu, C. (2011): Traitement littéraire d’un motif orientaliste dans l’œuvre de L.M Arcade: Poveste cu tigani [Literary treatment of an orientalist motif in L.M. Arcade’s “A story with some gipsies”]. ReCHERches no 7. 291-299.

Chapters in edited Volumes

Drăgănoiu, C. (2011): Specificul exilului romanesc (1945-1989): privire generala [Features of Romanian exile 1945-1989]. In Ruxandoiu, L., Anghelescu, M. (Eds.). Researches and studies.Volume of The Doctoral School of the Faculty of Letters II. Bucharest: Paralela 45. 57-65.

Drăgănoiu, C. (2011): Exilul literar romanesc [Romanian literary exile]. In Anghelescu, M. (Ed.). Romanian cultural and literary studies. Bucharest: Paralela 45. 11-21.

Drăgănoiu, C. (2010): Poveste cu tigani [A story with some gipsies]. in In Ruxandoiu, L., Anghelescu, M. (Eds.).Researches and studies.Volume of The Doctoral School of the Faculty of Letters I. Bucharest: Paralela 45. 55-65.