Papers by Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru
Indialogs, Apr 15, 2024
This book is a passionate reader's informed critical analysis of the emotional, cultural and, ult... more This book is a passionate reader's informed critical analysis of the emotional, cultural and, ultimately, textual function of love in Salman Rushdie's fiction. In Dana Bădulescu's refined approach, lovefor cultures and texts, for people and among people caught up in various social and historical circumstances -is the mechanism through which, despite, at times, serious adverse circumstances, the famous novelist's literary work comes to life and touches the hearts of a vast international audience. It is well known that Rushdie's position in the world has always been that of a critical intellectual at odds with the powers that be. Yet, as Bădulescu shows in her vast, enthusiastic and original reading that boldly avoids stereotypes and covers almost the whole of Rushdie's work so far, his embattled attitude towards the various injustices of political systems hides a fascination with otherness that leads him to a long series of geographical, cultural and inter-human border-crossings. Bădulescu's Rushdie is a positive, luminous, infinitely creative storyteller (rather than the victim of political injustice, spending his life in hiding and potentially seeking vengeance), in love with the world and with the beauty of its many cultures and mythologies, whose rich web of scenarios of seduction charm audiences worldwide through the power of his unmatchable imagination. The book is introduced by a Foreword signed by Petya Tsoneva of the "St. Cyril and St. Methodius" University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. Tsoneva positions Bădulescu's contribution within the international exchange of critical ideas under the sign of a "reading of borders", which she describes as "a recent prolific preoccupation of the academic world", and describes it as "a multi-level analysis of Rushdie's spectacular position in the world of writing" (Bădulescu, 2022, ix). Bădulescu, in turn, invites us in her preface to this edition to read the book through the lens of love, which seems to be the most appropriate emotion that should govern the approach to writing of this calibre. She describes herself -and, by extension, any critic -as a reader in love with Rushdie's writing and proposes an SEDUCTIONS OF WRITING AND READING: A REVIEW OF RUSHDIE'S CROSS-POLLINATIONS BY DANA BĂDULESCU
Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture, 2021
American, British and Canadian Studies
Throughout the history of the United States, there have been many critical times associated with ... more Throughout the history of the United States, there have been many critical times associated with racism. When other forms of crisis overlap the existing ones – as the Covid-19 pandemic – even more challenges appear, calling for a more complex artistic response. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is well known across the United States and the world not only through their innovative ballet style (which builds on classical choreography and enriches it with creatively processed blues, jazz, and Afro-Caribbean tones), but also through what Thomas F. DeFrantz calls Alvin Ailey’s “embodiment of African American culture” in the subtitle of his book (Dancing Revelations, 2004). This essay looks at Ailey Theater’s politics of the dancing body, with a focus on recent productions included in the Ailey All Access online project, meant to replace a Fall 2021 United States tour that could not take place because of the pandemic. I will argue that the company’s choreographic overcoming and even ...
BRILL eBooks, Apr 16, 2021
EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
India and the Diasporic Imagination, 2011
Women's Voices in Post- …, 2005
… Conference 1 to 5 August 2005, 2007
Indialogs: Spanish Journal of India Studies, Apr 19, 2022
Juan-José Martín-González's book Transoceanic Perspectives in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy is an i... more Juan-José Martín-González's book Transoceanic Perspectives in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy is an inspired example of the recent convergence of maritime criticism with postcolonial studies, which responds to the growing interest in Amitav Ghosh's fiction of the Indian Ocean and also does justice to Ghosh's uniquely original voice in the vast panorama of contemporary global literature in English. The book celebrates the oceanic turn in criticism and the rise of maritime fiction responding to the increasingly fluid world that we live in. With the exception of a few scholars whose contributions are quoted in the book (Crane 2011, Machado 2016, Lauret 2001 and Mohan 2019), little has been written about the connection between Ghosh's trilogy and maritime criticism, as the author shows (7). Consequently, this comes as a necessary addition to both Ghosh scholarship and to Oceanic studies, proposing an attentive, close reading-based critical response to one of the most important directions in Ghosh's fiction and showing that his neo-Victorian trilogy traces the emergence of a proto-globalising
in English offers an innovative reading of several texts by Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Vi... more in English offers an innovative reading of several texts by Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Vikram Chandra. The volume joins the comparative scholarship on the above named authors-which has focused on the effects of globalization (Jay), or the global market place (Huggan; Dwivedi and Lau), questions of modernity (Wiemann), issues of genre (Ganapathy-Dore)-by foregrounding the role of myth and storytelling and the ways they negotiate between the Indian tradition of the epic and the "requirements" of the contemporary novel (3). The author focuses on performance and performativity, two key categories for understanding this body of work, and discusses them from both the perspective of the long durée time of Indian theatre and also from the standpoint of various Western conceptualizations. According to Draga Alexandru, "performativity of language" together with "performative identity" are fundamental aspects for understanding how "the boundaries of the self placed … in changing cultural in-betweenness are negotiated in Indian fiction in English" (5-6). She defines performance as "embodied meaning production," which is highly dynamic and functions as "the basis of establishing connections between the text and its contexts and audiences" (8). "Performativity," on the other hand, provides Draga Alexandru with her starting hypothesis, namely that "there is a degree of performativity in all fiction, since, besides telling stories, fiction triggers the realities of those stories into being" (9). From here, the book proceeds to interweave REVIEW OF MARIA-SABINA DRAGA ALEXANDRU, PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY
American, British and Canadian Studies Journal, 2012
In today’s global world, the urban/ rural opposition is increasingly becoming a more relevant mar... more In today’s global world, the urban/ rural opposition is increasingly becoming a more relevant marker of the acculturation of foreigners whose adoption of national values is reflected by the spaces they inhabit. As they bring with them traditions related to the healing and balancing forces of the earth, immigrants prompt a reconsideration of the urban/ rural dichotomy in the metropolitan spaces they come to inhabit. Rural landscape in American culture has a long tradition of acting as a source of an alternative symbolic imaginary, responsible for boosting people’s feelings of patriotic commitment that are crucial to national integration. Diasporic American fiction has increasingly combined this tradition with symbolic magic and natural elements brought over from the “other” cultural backgrounds their authors come from. This paper aims to study the socio-political negotiations in a few instances of cultural translation within the urban/ rural dialectic in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s ...
European Journal of Women's Studies, 2000
This article relates two forms of political and cultural marginality and emancipation to a third ... more This article relates two forms of political and cultural marginality and emancipation to a third one, which, in traditional patriarchal cultures, is the embodiment of marginality par excellence: that of the female self. It explores their similar positioning in the spatial and temporal economy of power relations in a detailed analysis of Irina Grigorescu Pana's novel Melbourne Sundays(1998), a fictionallyrical account of the Romanian author's 11-year exile in Australia, read as a narrative counterpart of her critical approach to exile in The Tomis Complex: Exile and Eros in Australian Literature(1996). These two works describe an experience happening at the intersection between the author's (communist, then postcommunist) national background – that of Romania – and the postcolonial one of her country of adoption – Australia – as they become relevant from her personal and professional experience as a woman writer. Exile is thus reflected in language (negotiated within the ...
americanstudies.ro
This paper will aim to expand Amitav Ghosh's notion of the shadow lines of history reflect... more This paper will aim to expand Amitav Ghosh's notion of the shadow lines of history reflected in the microcosm of a single family to the individual account of dislocation, migration and relocation in Domnica Rădulescu's novel Train to Trieste. I will show that this story of the experience ...
american-studies.ro
This paper will explore the Internet culture of the Romanian diaspora in the United States as a s... more This paper will explore the Internet culture of the Romanian diaspora in the United States as a space of reflection on the need to overcome binary oppositions such as motherland/otherland, past/present or center/margin which dominate classical theories ...
Mylius, Johan de/Jorgensen, Aage/Pedersen, Viggo …, 1999
Textus, 2010
... Like Deleuze and Guattari's nomad who will carry his house with him, Michael car... more ... Like Deleuze and Guattari's nomad who will carry his house with him, Michael carries the emo-tional baggage he holds on to wherever he goes. ... As an art, music is essentially de-pendent onperformance: it makes no sense to most people in the form of a score only. ...
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Papers by Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru