Beyond the Iron Curtain : Revisiting the Literary System of Communist Romania

Drawing on methodologies pertaining to Digital Humanities, World Literature, and Comparative Literature, the volume aims to challenge some of the enduring clichés regarding the literary production of Romanian communism. The first section focuses on socialist realism, socialist modernism, representations of the rural, and rural modernity. The second section deals with literary cosmopolitanism, literary dissidence, countercultural literary production, minority literatures in Romania, and the relationship between genre fiction and state politics. The third section looks at the communist literary production from a transnational perspective, exploring the Romanian polysystem during the ideological thaw, as well as forms of literary dissidence across the Soviet bloc.

Ştefan Baghiu is an assistant professor of Romanian literature and literary theory at the Department of Romance Studies at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. His main fields of research include literary translation as a cultural phenomenon, quantitative literary research, cultural studies, and Romanian postwar literature. He is the coordinator of The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel.

Ovio Olaru is an assistant professor of German language and literature at the Department of Anglo-American and German Studies at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. His fields of research include German, Romanian, and Scandinavian studies, as well as digital humanities. He is also a translator of Scandinavian literature.

Andrei Terian is a professor of Romanian literature at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. His research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century Romanian literature, history of the novel, comparative and world literature.