This is the web page of PCE grant 101/2021, “Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture,” offered by UEFISCDI.
Aceasta este pagina de web a proiectului PCE 101/2021, Răufăcători familiari: Despre intimitatea răului în literatura și cultura populară americană contemporană, oferit de UEFISDCI.
For our Project Description and Activities, please scroll down.
Pentru versiunea in limba romana a raportului de cercetare, va rugam vedeti in josul paginii.
Call for Papers
This is a Call for Papers for an online workshop titled Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture. The workshop asks what humor can contribute to our understanding of perpetrators by examining a selection of works from contemporary American literature and popular culture. Does humor help demythologize certain perpetrators whose international fame turned them into quasi-mythical figures? Can the ownership of humorous content about a traumatic situation or process endured by a specific marginalized community be transferred to other communities? How can humor successfully target perpetrators without inadvertently trivializing the suffering of the victims and survivors? What can different sub-genres of comedy and humor do differently when it comes to the representation of perpetrators and their deeds?
Please send all inquiries and proposals (a title, 250-word abstract, and 100-word bio) to Mihaela Precup at mihaela.precup@lls.unibuc.ro. The deadline for proposals is November 12, 2023. The workshop will take place online on November 25, 2023.
A selection of the papers will be published in the 2025 issue of the open-access double-blind peer reviewed journal [Inter]sections (www.intersections-journal.com).
Please find the full program, book of abstracts, and speakers’ bios for our workshop Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture here: https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/)
Call for Papers
This is a Call for Papers for an online workshop titled Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, which explores what happens when perpetrators become familiar figures, either because their representation is well-circulated in works of American literature and popular culture, in ways that make the audience feel intimately connected to them, or simply because they are represented either by themselves or by their own family members and friends. By “perpetrators” we refer to “those who had a hand…in the physical destruction of other individuals” (Strauss 2017), but this workshop also attempts to expand this definition, which does not cover certain other more insidious acts of perpetration, like those that led to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement or the “genocide by default” produced during the current global pandemic (Gonsalves qtd. in Moran 2020). Additionally, this workshop begins—but also departs from—an understanding of “evil” that follows Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of the concept as an act performed by people engaged in a system of everyday systematic oppression, whose interpretation of the world is not profound, but shallow, and who are willing to erase their own personhood by claiming that they are mere cogs in the system (Arendt 1963; Eaglestone 2017).
Perpetrators and their crimes have often been sensationalized and even turned into figures of fun, romance or adventure in contemporary American literature and popular culture, in a recent boom of productions that both rely on and fuel the public’s appetite for extra-ordinary stories. One of the paradoxical effects of this process is the public’s enhanced familiarity with these figures of evil, which can often make them appear not only banal (as Hannah Arendt famously put it), but also intimately close to the public that consumes cultural products about their deeds. This trivialization is often denounced by survivors and victims’ families; however, it remains an important component of perpetrator portraiture in the public space. It is, thus, not the purpose of this workshop to examine the more historically-minded representations of famous perpetrator figures like Adolf Hitler, but rather to inquire what happens when the very iconicity of someone like Hitler as a transcultural figure of memory makes him a familiar (even anecdotal) figure whose everydayness draws attention away from his considerable crimes. At the same time, it is this familiarity—through the representation of perpetrators of various kinds in popular culture—that may both offer and block access to important questions about how evil becomes possible.
By examining acts of perpetration from genocide to sexual assault and other, more pervasive contemporary forms of perpetration, this workshop will also attempt to enrich the still developing vocabulary of perpetrator studies, a recent discipline with roots in memory and trauma studies, as well as moral philosophy, history, and cultural studies.
These are some (but not all) of the questions this workshop will engage with: What are the implications of a perpetrator becoming familiar, intimately close to the public, either because they are portrayed by a family member, or because they are the subject of a TV series, film, or documentary that presents them in such a light that inevitably draws the audience into their intimate space? What happens when acts of perpetration become so familiar that we no longer identify/read them as such because they have already moved into a realm of inevitability and everydayness? How can we employ heavily theorized and emotionally laden terms such as “trauma” and “postmemory”—terms that originate in the study of the experience of Holocaust survivors and have generally been applied to victims of violence—in order to better comprehend the aftermath of perpetration and the effects of perpetration upon the families of the perpetrators? What can humor and satire contribute to the current conversation about the proper representation of perpetrators? How does the examination of the perpetrator shade new light on what it means to be human, as the quality (being human) is usually mobilized either as a descriptive for the victim or the perpetrator?
Please send all inquiries and proposals (a title, 250-word abstract, and 100-word bio) to Mihaela Precup at mihaela.precup@lls.unibuc.ro. The deadline for proposals is July 10, 2022. The workshop will take place on September 30, 2022.
A selection of the papers will be published in the 2023 issue of the open access double blind peer reviewed journal [Inter]sections (www.intersections-journal.com).
Project Description
This project, titled Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, explores what happens when perpetrators become familiar figures, either because their representation is well-circulated in works of American literature and popular culture, in ways that make the audience feel intimately connected to them, or simply because they are represented by their own family members and friends. By “perpetrators” we refer to “those who had a hand…in the physical destruction of other individuals” (Strauss 2017), but this project also attempts to expand this definition, which does not cover certain other more insidious acts of perpetration, like those that led to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement or the “genocide by default” produced during the current global pandemic (Gonsalves qtd. in Moran 2020). Additionally, this project begins—but also departs from—an understanding of “evil” that follows Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of the concept as an act performed by people engaged in a system of everyday systematic oppression, whose interpretation of the world is not profound, but shallow, and who are willing to erase their own personhood by claiming that they are mere cogs in the system (Arendt 1963; Eaglestone 2017).
Noted attempts have been made to understand the motivations of the perpetrator, such as the controversial Milgram experiment (1961, Yale University) and Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment (1973, Stanford University), which used role play to show that the subjects were influenced by both their environment and their assigned social roles in their decision—however reluctant—to obey orders and inflict pain upon other human beings. However, it was only recently that American literature, popular culture, and academic life witnessed a veritable boom in the production of texts about perpetrators, perpetration, and what facilitates them. Narratives about perpetrators and their deeds tend to follow the pattern of detective “whodunit” fiction, but with an underlying “whydunit” motivation. Perpetrator stories, even when detailed and well-researched, retain an aura of mystery. This arises from the difficulty of fully solving the riddle of how it is possible for human beings to do often unrepresentable things to other human beings. This project begins from the assumption that this aura of mystery—which sometimes glamorizes perpetrators—contributes to the creation and circulation of a marketable figure of the perpetrator.
Perpetrators and their crimes are often sensationalized and even turned into figures of fun, romance or adventure in contemporary American literature and popular culture, in a recent boom of productions that both rely on and fuel the public’s appetite for extra-ordinary stories. One of the paradoxical effects of this process is the public’s enhanced familiarity with these figures of evil, which can often make them appear not only banal (as Hannah Arendt famously put it), but also intimately close to the public that consumes cultural products about their deeds. This trivialization is often denounced by survivors and victims’ families; however, it remains an important component of perpetrator portraiture in the public space. It is, thus, not the purpose of this project to examine the more historically-minded representations of famous perpetrator figures like Adolf Hitler, but rather to inquire what happens when the very iconicity of someone like Hitler as a transcultural figure of memory makes him a familiar (even anecdotal) figure whose everydayness draws attention away from his considerable crimes. At the same time, it is this familiarity—through the representation of perpetrators of various kinds in popular culture—that may both offer and block access to important questions about how evil becomes possible.
This project is extremely important from a socio-cultural point of view because it can generate answers about why and how acts of evil become possible, but also how we as citizens can work towards preventing them, even as they enter the realm of everyday familiarity. By examining acts of perpetration from genocide to sexual assault and other, more pervasive contemporary forms of perpetration, this project will also attempt to enrich the still developing vocabulary of perpetrator studies, a recent discipline with roots in memory and trauma studies, as well as moral philosophy, history, and cultural studies. At the same time, the project will engage with important questions such as: What are the implications of a perpetrator becoming familiar, intimately close to the public, either because they are portrayed by a family member, or because they are the subject of a TV series, film, or documentary that presents them in such a light that inevitably draws the audience into their intimate space? What happens when acts of perpetration become so familiar that we no longer identify/read them as such because they have already moved into a realm of inevitability and everydayness? How can we employ heavily theorized and emotionally laden terms such as “trauma” and “postmemory”—terms that originate in the study of the experience of Holocaust survivors and have generally been applied to victims of violence—in order to better comprehend the aftermath of perpetration and the effects of perpetration upon the families of the perpetrators? What can humor and satire contribute to the current conversation about the proper representation of perpetrators? How does the examination of the perpetrator shade new light on what it means to be human, as the quality (being human) is usually mobilized either as a descriptive for the victim or the perpetrator?
The elements of difficulty of this project largely stem from the fact that perpetrator studies is a relatively new discipline, which has been developing over the past 30 years, in the wake of the end of the Cold War, followed by the end of apartheid in Africa, the Rwandan genocide, the war in Yugoslavia, 9/11, the wars in Iran and Afghanistan (to name only a few events in which the United States was more or less directly involved; see Critchell, Knittel, Perra, and Ungor 2017), but also from the high degree of interdisciplinarity it entails. In other words, it will be necessary to frame our research very rigorously at the intersection of memory and trauma studies, literary studies, popular culture studies, and other related disciplines in order to produce relevant results. It will also be quite difficult to identify and manage a relevant and coherent corpus of texts that will allow us to make substantial contributions to the field. Last, but not least, we need to consider the fact that the vocabulary of perpetrator studies is in flux and “underdeveloped” (Rothberg 2019), and that this will pose its specific set of challenges.
All in all, throughout the project, 4 articles were published (two indexed in international databases, of which 1 open access; 1 ISI-AHCI indexed article and an article in an open access and double-blind peer reviewed journal), 3 articles were sent for publication, 5 book chapters were published (and 2 chapters are in print) and a review was published in an ISI-ESCI journal. 1 monograph and 1 edited volume were also published. There were 41 presentations at international conferences and members completed 9 research stays at libraries from abroad. The members of the project also organized 2 workshops on the topic of the project, one in 2022 and one in 2023, according to the implementation plan, and co-edited a special issue, of a journal indexed BDI, double-blind peer reviewed and open access (the special issue is on the topic of the project). The project website was also updated. More details can be found below.
A detailed version of the 2021-2023 research report can be found here.
RESEARCH REPORT
January-December 2023
- Participation in International Conferences (18)
Dragoș Manea
“I Will Always Be the King of Greenland”:Fantasy, Conversion, and Resistance in Søren Mosdal’s Erik the Red: King of Winter and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s “Metal”, HistorioGRAPHICS, Amerikahaus Munchen and NS-DOKUMENTATIONS-ZENTRUM MUNICH, 15-17 June 2023,https://historiographics.com/program/
“The Arms of the True Gods”:Religion, Estrangement, and Adaptation in Søren Mosdal’s Erik the Red: King of Winter (2016), Better Living Through Comics. The 2023 Joint International Graphic Novel and Comics and International Bande Dessinée Society, Cambridge University, 3-7 July 2023, https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/events/conferences/comics23/
“On the American Appropriation of the Viking World: Fantasy, Religion, and Far-Right Politics in Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s ‘Metal’ (2017),” Mapping Spaces and (the) US, co-organized by the Romanian Association for American Studies and the Fulbright Commission, Ovidius University, Constanța, 5-7 October 2023, https://raas.ro/update-the-2023-raas-fulbright-conference-conference-schedule/
“’I’ve No Desire’: Repulsion and the Frame of the Monstrous in Santiago García and David Rubin’s Beowulf (2017),” Comics Forum 2023: Reboots & Remediations, Leeds Central Library, 9-10 November 2023, https://comicsforum.org/category/comics-forum-2023/
“’Another Monster’: Perpetration, Humor, and Transgression in Santiago García and David Rubin’s Beowulf (2017),” Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, American Studies Center, University of Bucharest, 25 November 2023, https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/
Dana Mihăilescu
“Humor as (Graphic) Revenge against Holocaust Perpetrators in Miriam Katin’s Letting It Go,” Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture online workshop, University of Bucharest, 25 November 2023, https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/
“Monsters, Sexuality, the Holocaust and 1960s American Culture in Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Book I (2017),” Horror and the Gothic in Holocaust Representation Conference, Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton, UK
Haunting Specters of Holocaust Perpetration and VictimhoodReconstitutinga Young Child’s Memory Lens: On Miriam Katin’s Graphic MemoirsWe Are on Our Own andLetting It Go,” Women in the Holocaust International Conference, Belgrade, Serbia https://www.whisc.center/Conference-program.
“New Directions of Holocaust Representation via Solidarity and Self-Care in Collaborative Graphic Narratives between Artists and Child Survivors:On Charlotte Schallié’sBut I Live 2022 Book Project,”Better Living Through Comics. The 2023 Joint Conference of the International Graphic Novel & Comics and the International Bande Dessinée Society, Cambridge, UK, https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/events/conferences/comics23/
“New Directions of Holocaust Representation in Collaborative Graphic Narratives between Artists and Child Survivors: On Charlotte Schallié’s But I Live 2022 Book Project,” CoHLit-21 The Holocaust in 21st-Century Children’s, Young Adult and Adult Literature: New Comparative Perspectives Conference, Antwerp, Belgium, presentation on 29 June 2023. https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/projects/literature-holocaust/antwerp-conference/program/.
Roxana Oltean
“Evil Things, in Robes of Sorrow.” Contemporary E.A. Poe Narratives and Comic Gothic Twists. Workshop “Laughing in the Face of Evil. Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture.” The Center for American Studies, The University of Bucharest, Romania. 25 November, 2023 (https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/).
“Sullen Darkness,” “Luminous Glare.” Cartographic Imaginations in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” and Matt Johnson’s Pym (2011). Conferința PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies, “Darkness in the American Imagination,” 4-6 Septembrie 2023 (https://www.popmec.com/darkness-conference/)
Mihaela Precup
“All hail storytellers”: Graphic Reflections on History and Conflict in Rutu Modan’s Tunnels,” HistorioGRAPHICS, Amerikahaus Munchen and NS-DOKUMENTATIONS-ZENTRUM MUNICH, 15-17 June 2023,https://historiographics.com/program/
“Through the Looking-Glass: Distortion, Transformation, and Self-Care in Autobiographical Comics,” Better Living Through Comics. The 2023 Joint International Graphic Novel and Comics and International Bande Dessinée Society, Cambridge University, 3-7 July 2023, https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/events/conferences/comics23/
“Graphic Storytelling and the Construction of Multidirectional Memory Spaces in Ali Fitzgerald’s Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and other Stories from a New Europe,” Mapping Spaces and (the) US, co-organized by the Romanian Association for American Studies and the Fulbright Commission, Ovidius University, Constanța, 5-7 October 2023, https://raas.ro/update-the-2023-raas-fulbright-conference-conference-schedule/
”Comedy, Conflict, and the Revision of History in Rutu Modan’s Tunnels,” Comics Forum 2023: Reboots & Remediations, Leeds Central Library, 9-10 November 2023, https://comicsforum.org/category/comics-forum-2023/
“The Comedy of Catastrophe in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture: Preliminary Considerations and Questions,” Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, American Studies Center, University of Bucharest, 25 November 2023, https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/
- Publications
Dana Mihăilescu
Review of Jewish Women in Comics. Bodies and Borders, eds. Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman, Syracuse University Press, 2023 published in European Comic Art (vol. 16, no. 2, 2023), pp. 128-131 journal in Web of Science Emerging Sciences Citation Index, Ebsco, ERIH-PLUS etc. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/search?f_0=author&q_0=Dana+Mihăilescu.
“Representations of Identity and the Holocaust Archive in Third-Generation Graphic Narrative: Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home,” Emerging Trends in Third-Generation Holocaust Literature, eds. Alan L. Berger and Lucas F.W. Wilson, Lexington Books (Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature), 2023, pp. 99-116. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666932515/Emerging-Trends-in-Third-Generation-Holocaust-Literature
Roxana Oltean
“We’re Supposed To Have A Special Relationship.” Cold War Men and Espionage Narratives of Operation Stopwatch/Gold in Ian McEwan’s The Innocent. Vernon Press, 2023: 131-158.
“The Jewish Child.” Wartime Engagement and the Palestine “Garden” Makers in the Lifework of Phyllis Bottome. Chapter 8. Woes of Wars in Text and Context. Eds. Alina Bottez & Adela Catană. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (in print)
“A land where iniquity is searched out.” Negotiating Denunciation, Representing Ostracization in Scarlet Letter narratives.” Cultures of Denunciation: Defamation and Creative Resistance in American Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century. Ed. Stefan Brandt et al. (in print)
Mihaela Precup and Dragoș Manea
“Sweet tits of Billy!”: Remaking Queer History in Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles. Fantastika. Journal for Imaginative Narratives (peer-reviewed, open access), Vol. 7, issue 2, October 2023 https://www.fantastikajournal.com/volume-7-issue-2
- Research Periods
Mihaela Precup
- 11-25 August 2023, research period at Sourasky Central Library and the Wiener Library, Universitatea din Tel Aviv, Israel,
- 22 July-1 August 2023, research period at Humboldt University Library, Berlin
Dragoș Manea
13 April 2023-21 April 2023, research period at Humboldt University, Berlin
22 July-4 August 2023, research period at British Library, London
7 August-24 August 2023, research period at John W. Graham Library, University of Toronto
- Workshop
The project members co-organized an online workshop titled Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture (November 25, 2023). The workshop asks what humor can contribute to our understanding of perpetrators by examining a selection of works from contemporary American literature and popular culture. Does humor help demythologize certain perpetrators whose international fame turned them into quasi-mythical figures? Can the ownership of humorous content about a traumatic situation or process endured by a specific marginalized community be transferred to other communities? How can humor successfully target perpetrators without inadvertently trivializing the suffering of the victims and survivors? What can different sub-genres of comedy and humor do differently when it comes to the representation of perpetrators and their deeds? The full program and book of abstracts can be found here: https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/.
- Special Issue of an Academic Journal
A special issue on the topic of the project was published in the open access and double-blind peer reviewed journal [Inter]sections, co-edited by all project members, indexed in DOAJ, MLA Periodicals, EBSCO, CEEOL, Ulrichsweb and ERIH PLUS. The issue can be accessed on the journal’s website, here: https://intersections-journal.com/2023/12/03/intersections-26-2023/
RESEARCH REPORT
(January-December 2022)
A. Participation in International Conferences (12)
Dana Mihăilescu
“Early Postwar Accounts about Romanian Jewish Orphans’ Holocaust Experiences in Transnistria,” articol prezentat la conferinţa Childhood at War and Genocide. Children’s Experiences of Conflict in the 20th Century – Agency, Survival, Memory and Representation, Center for Holocaust Studies, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Munich, Fritz Bauer Institute with the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Institute of Advanced Studies at University College London, 17-19 October 2022 (https://www.fritz-bauer-institut.de/en/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung/ac-childhood-at-war-and-genocide; https://www.fritz-bauer-institut.de/fileadmin/editorial/download/veranstaltungen/2022-10_Childhood-at-War.pdf)
“Familiar Perpetrators and the Holocaust Archive in Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home .” Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture Workshop,organized by the Center for American Studies, University of Bucharest, 8 October 2022 (https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/)
“Monsters, Sexuality, the Holocaust and Late 1960s American Culture in Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Book I (2017),” 33rd Annual Conference on American Literature. American Literature Association, Chicago, 26-29 May 2022 (https://americanliteratureassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ALA-2022-Program-FINAL_PROOF-updated-051222.pdf)
Mihaela Precup
“‘The Big Question Remains: WHY?’: Diffuse Perpetration in Derf Backderf’s Kent State (2020).” Picturing the Perpetrator in Comics and Graphic Narratives, online workshop, American Studies Center, 7 May, 2022 (https://www.dragosmanea.org/picturing-the-perpetrator-in-comics-and-graphic-narratives-program/)
“‘The first homosexual ever to grow old’: Queer Time and the Comedy of Catastrophe in Andrew Sean Greer’s Less.” The Annual Conference of the English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest AICED 23, Literature and Cultural Studies Section, Disaster Discourse: Representations of Catastrophe, Universitatea din București, 2-4 June, 2022 (http://engleza.lls.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/AICED-23_literature-and-cultural-studies.pdf)
“’Some of it is outright bullshit’: The Ethics of Representation in Derf Backderf’s Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio (2020).” The International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference 2022: Comics and Conscience: Ethics, Morality, and Great Responsibility, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, 29 June-1 July, 2022 (https://internationalgraphicnovelandcomicsconference.com/igncc-2022/)
“Perpetration and the Logic of Familiarity in Drawing Power (ed. Diane Noomin).” Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, online workshop, American Studies Center, University of Bucharest, 8 October, 2022 (https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/)
Dragoș Manea
“Nina Bujevac’s Bezimena and the Logic of Punishment.” The Annual Conference of the English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest AICED 23, Literature and Cultural Studies Section, Disaster Discourse: Representations of Catastrophe, Universitatea din București, 2-4 June, 2022 (http://engleza.lls.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/AICED-23_literature-and-cultural-studies.pdf)
“Mythology and the Ethics of Punishment in Nina Bunjevac’s Bezimena.” Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, online workshop, American Studies Center, University of Bucharest, 8 October, 2022 (https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/)
Roxana Oltean
“’A Splendid Promise of Things to Come.’ Hospitality and Social Engagement in the Lifework of Phyllis Bottome.” MLA International Symposium, “Being Hospitable: Language and Culture Across Borders” University of Glasgow, Scotland, 2-4 June, 2022 (online participation; https://symposium.mla.org/files/2022/06/Symposium-Program-update-6.3b.22.pdf)
“‘Because One Did Survive the Wreck.’ Modes of Perpetrating and Witnessing in Moby Dick Disaster Narratives” The Annual Conference of the English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest AICED 23, Literature and Cultural Studies Section, Disaster Discourse: Representations of Catastrophe, Universitatea din București, 2-4 June, 2022 (http://engleza.lls.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/AICED-23_literature-and-cultural-studies.pdf)
“’Your Humble Typesetter and Biggest Fan.’ The Familiar Perpetrator in James McTeague’s “The Raven” (2012)” Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture, online workshop, American Studies Center, University of Bucharest, 8 October, 2022 (https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/)
B. Research Stays
1-17 August, 2022: Dragoș Manea and Mihaela Precup, Humboldt University Library, Berlin, Germany
20 August-4 September, 2022: Mihaela Precup, The National Library of Israel, Jerusalem
C. Books
Manea, Dragoș. Reframing the Perpetrator in Contemporary Comcis: On the Importance of the Strange. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022 (ISBN: 978-3-031-03852-5; https://link.springer.com/book/9783031038525)
D. Book Chapters
Mihăilescu, Dana and Ludmila Martanovschi. “Representations of the “Aliens Within”: Romanian Jews and Roma in Radu Jude’s Cinema.” In The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor, edited by Geoffroy de Laforcade, Daniel Stein, and Cathy C. Waegner, De Gruyter (Anglia Book Series), 2022, pp. 85-111, doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110789799-005
E. Articles in Indexed Journals
Precup, Mihaela and Dragoș Manea. “The Perpetrator as Punch-line: Hipster Hitler and the Ambiguity of Controversial Humor.” Journal of Perpetrator Research, 4.2 (2022): 145-172 (DOI: http://doi.org/10.21039/jpr.4.2.116; indexed in ROAD, DOAJ, CROSSREF, Sciencegate și THE KEEPERS)
F. Articles in ISI-AHCI Indexed Journals
Mihăilescu, Dana. “Early Postwar Accounts on Jewish Orphans from Transnistria.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 36, no. 3 (2022), 19 pp. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcac056
G. Book Chapters Accepted for Publication
Oltean, Roxana. “‘The Jewish Child.’ Wartime Engagement and the Palestine ‘Garden’ Makers in the Lifework of Phyllis Bottome.” Chapter 8. Woes of Wars in Text and Context. Eds. Alina Bottez & Adela Catană. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Oltean, Roxana. “‘We’re Supposed To Have A Special Relationship.’ Cold War Men and Espionage Narratives of Operation Stopwatch/Gold in Ian McEwan’s The Innocent.” In War, Espionage, and Masculinity in British Fiction, edited by Susan L. Austin, Vernon Press, 2021: 131-158.
H. Workshop
The Workshop Familiar Perpetrators: On the Intimacy of Evil in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture was organized by the members of the research project on October 8, 2022. Please find the program, full book of abstracts, and speakers’ bios here: https://mihaelaprecup.com/2022/11/27/workshop-familiar-perpetrators/.
I. Special Issue of an Indexed Journal
J. Call for Papers for 2023 Workshop
Please scroll up for a Call for Papers for our 2023 workshop on Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture.
Please find the full (Romanian) version of the 2022 project report here.
RESEARCH REPORT
(January-December 2021)
A. Participation in International Conferences (11)
1. Dana Mihăilescu
• “Monsters, Sexuality, the Holocaust and Late 1960s American Culture in Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Book I (2017),” Joint Conference of International Graphic Novels and Comics and the International Bande Dessinée Society 2021, University of Cambridge, online, June 21-25, 2021 https://internationalgraphicnovelandcomicsconference.com.
• “Haunting Specters of World War II Memories in Miriam Katin’s Graphic Memoirs We Are on Our Own and Letting It Go,” Modern Wars, Genocide, Survival, and Life Writing Seminar organized by Phyllis Lassner and Margaretl Richardson, ACLA 2021 Conference, online, April 8-11, 2021 https://acla.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/2/sessiongallery/628.
• discussant for Anastasiia Simferovska. “A Plagiarized Testimony? Authorship, Legacy, and the Holocaust Art of Henryk Beck and Zinovii Tolkachev” at the Lessons & Legacies Regional Interim Workshop for New Research in Holocaust Studies, Northwestern University, October 28-30, 2021 https://hef.northwestern.edu/lessons-and-legacies-conference/lessons-and-legacies-2020.html.
Mihaela Precup and Dragoș Manea
„‘Let’s talk about something else!’: Perpetration and Incomplete Memory in Sofia Z-4515” at the international conference „Narrating Violence: Making Race, Making Difference”, University of Turku and The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention at The American University of Paris, în perioada March 15-17, 2021 https://www.aup.edu/sites/default/files/widget-download/file/AUP_Narrating_Violence_Program.pdf
“The Overfamiliar Perpetrator: Hipster Hitler, Transcultural Memory, and the Banalisation of Genocide,” at the international conference „Coherence in Comics: An Interdisciplinary Approach” (16th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comics Studies), Universitatea din Salzburg (online), October 14-16, 2021 (https://coherenceincomics.sbg.ac.at/program/
“‘Sweet tits of Billy!’: Reclaiming Queer History in Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles”at the international conference LGBTQIA+ Fantastika Graphics (online), November 20, 2021 https://08ec66e6-fb25-499a-8fcc-858c91585055.filesusr.com/ugd/506799_5df21f366f7448239eba8db65abea4b9.pdf, https://player.fm/series/fantastika-journal/sweet-tits-of-billy)
Mihaela Precup
“Familiarity and Perpetration in Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival (ed. Diane Noomin)” at the international conference AICED-22, “Re-writing/Re-imagining the Past,” English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest, June 3-5, 2021 http://engleza.lls.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Program_22AICED_2021_Literature.pdf
“Unbroken Lines: Retracing Genealogy and Mending Connections in Sofia Z-4515” at the international conference “Crisis Lines”, organized online by City, University of London, June 9-10, 2021 https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2021/06/crisis-lines-coloniality-modernity-comics
“‘The regular guy as sexual predator’: Representing Familiar Perpetrators in Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival” at the international conference International Graphic Novels and Comics+International Bande Dessinee Society, “Comics and Their Audiences/Audiences and Their Comics”, organized online by the University of Cambridge, June 21-25, 2021 https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/events/conferences/comics21/
“Land, Ownership, and Perpetration in The White Lotus (HBO, 2021-)” at the international conference “Eco Consciousness: Imperatives in American Culture” organized online by the Romanian Association for American Studies, Ovidius University of Constanta and the Fulbright Commission in Romania, October 7-9, 2021 http://www.raas.ro/uploads//2021/UPDATED_FINAL_program__RAAS_2021_online.pdf
Roxana Oltean
“Tropes of Discovery in E.A. Poe’s Works. Recirculating Exploration as Detective Narrative.” Discovery. 42nd Annual Virtual Conference of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. March 11-13, 2021
https://ncsaweb.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2021-NCSA-Discover-Virtual.pdf
“‘The Old World is Finished.’ Phyllis Bottome’s Lifework and Ethical-Political Engagement in Interwar and Post-War Europe,” at the international conference 41st Conference of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies, organizată de The University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal, May 20-21, 2021 (http://apeaameetingaveiro2020.web.ua.pt/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/41st-apeaa_programa-e-livro-de-resumos-4.pdf
B. Research Stays (1)
Dragoș Manea. Freiburg University Library, 2.08.2021-15.09.2021.
C. Articles Published in Academic Journals (2)
- Dana Mihailescu. “Jewish Identity amid Wars and Migration: Transnational and Transgenerational Itineraries in Julia Alekseyeva’s Soviet Daughter. A Graphic Revolution.” Literature & Belief. Special issue on Jewish comics and graphic novels edited by Victoria Aarons, vol. 40.2 & 41.1, 2021, pp. 147-173. https://christianvalues.byu.edu/literature-and-belief/. [journal indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, Abstracts of English Studies, American Humanities Index (AHI), and Literary Criticism Register]
- Dragos Manea and Mihaela Precup
“‘Who are you crying for?’: Empathy, fantasy and the framing of the perpetrator in Nina Bunjevac’s Bezimena.”
Studies in Comics, 11.2 (November 2020; actual publication date: February 25, 2021): 369-383, , indexed in Art & Architecture Complete, Art & Architecture Source, Art Abstracts, Art Full Text, Art Source, ARTbibliographies Modern (ABM), Book Review Digest Plus, British Humanities Index, Design and Applied Art Index (DAAI), EBSCO, Emerging Sources Citation Index, ERIH, FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives), MLA, Scopus, Summon, TOC Premier, Ulrich’s Web https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/stic/2020/00000011/00000002/art00011
D. Edited Volumes (1)
Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru and Dragoș Manea (eds). Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture. Between Cultural memory and Transmediality. Leiden: Brill, 2021. ISBN 978-90-04-45374-6
E. Book Chapters (2)
Dana Mihăilescu. “‘Shot in the heart on Valentine’s day’: Monsters, Sexuality, the Holocaust and Late 1960s American Culture in Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Book I (2017).” Beyond Maus. The Legacy of Holocaust Comics. Eds. Ole Frahm, Hans-Joachim Hahn, and Markus Streb. Wien, Berlin: Böhlau Verlag / An Imprint of Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht and Brill Group (Schriften des Centrums für Jüdische Studien, 34 series), 2021, pp. 353-380. ISBN: 978-3-205-21065-8. Book doi: https://doi.org/10.7767/9783205210672. Chapter doi: https://doi.org/10.7767/9783205210672.353.
Mihaela Precup. “’A Secular Mind Searching for Its Lost Love’: Mourning, Religion, and the Return of the Dead in Meghan O’Rourke’s The Long Goodbye in Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru and Dragoș Manea (eds). Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture. Between Cultural memory and Transmediality. Leiden: Brill, 2021. ISBN 978-90-04-45374-6
Raport de cercetare — Versiunea în limba română