Dissertation Project
"Erfahrung" und "Wahrnehmung" in der Prosa rumänisch-jüdischer Autoren der Zwischenkriegszeit (ca. 1920–1940): Ion Călugăru, Ury Benador, Max Blecher
"Experience" and "Perception" in the Literature of Romanian-Jewish Writers of the Interwar Period (ca. 1920–1940): Ion Călugăru, Ury Benador, Max Blecher
The well known Romanian-Jewish writers of the 1920s and 1930s, Ion Călugăru, Ury Benador and Max Blecher, have faded into obscurity in the Romanian culture of the postwar period. The problematic literary reception of their work is part of the history of exclusion of the Jewish religion and culture in the communist period in Romania. Călugăru's, Benador's and Blecher's literary work witnesses the search for meaning in the interwar period, a historical and cultural controversial age, considered nevertheless on many accounts the “Golden Age” of Romanian modern culture. These writers deal on the one hand with Jewish life and Jewish culture in Romania on the background of the intensifying nationalistic discourse at the beginning of the 20th century and the increasing anti-Semitic riots of the 1930s and 1940s. On the other hand they take up different European philosophical and cultural issues and intertwine them in an original literary idiom, different in many aspects from the Romanian national literature. One of the main concerns of their work is the literary examination of the concepts 'experience' and 'perception', terms that are representative of the discourse of literary modernism in Western and Eastern Europe alike. These concepts undergo in Călugăru's, Benador's and Blecher's literary work different changes of meaning, dependent on their specific aesthetic perspective and on the historical, cultural and philosophical contexts.
Please also see an overview of his project in the Graduate School's 2014 Annual Report.
Curriculum Vitae
Born in Sibiu, Romania. 2005-2008 German, English and American Studies in Sibiu and Marburg/Lahn (Erasmus Scholarship). 2008-2010 Master of Arts in Comparative Literature at the University of Regensburg (Honours Master's Programme East European Studies) with a Go West Scholarship from the Haniel Foundation Germany.
Positions, Assignments and Memberships
- Member of the Study Group "Literature - Narrativity - Discourse"
Awards
- Go West Scholarships of the Haniel Stiftung Deutschland (2008-2010)
- Erasmus Scholareship at the Philipps Universität Marburg (2007/08)
Publications
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
With Jan Arend, Bojidar Beremski, Kateryna Katsun, Jörg Moehring: "Jerusalem des Nordens". Das jüdische Vilnius in Geschichte und Gedächtnis. In: Vilnius. Geschichte und Gedächtnis einer Stadt zwischen den Kulturen. Frankfurt a.M. et al. 2010, 49-102.
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