Proiecte / Projects

Centrul de Studii Americane dezvoltă și găzduiește proiecte de cercetare, dezvoltare instituțională și mobilitate academică, finanțate prin programe naționale și internaționale.

The American Studies Center develops and hosts research, institutional development, and academic mobility projects supported through national and international funding programmes.

2024

Fulbright Specialist Project 2024

Democracy in Crisis

Project code: P009908

Project coordinator: Dana Crăciun

Fulbright Specialist: Paul Gardner, Professor Emeritus, Luther College

Period: 15–30 October 2024

Supported by: Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

Taking place shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Democracy in Crisis examined the historical, political, and institutional challenges facing contemporary American democracy. Fulbright Specialist Paul Gardner engaged students, faculty, and the wider Timișoara community through a series of academic and public events. These included the lecture American Democracy in Crisis, a workshop on Political and Media Literacy, and a public discussion, How One Can Win the Votes and Lose the Elections. The project combined academic analysis with civic outreach, encouraging critical reflection on democratic institutions, electoral processes, political communication, and media literacy.

Research Mobility Project (MC2024)

Funding: UEFISCDI

Researcher: Loredana Bercuci

Host institution: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Period: 1–15 November 2024

This project set out to explore the representation of Eastern Europe in the writings of African-American authors from the 1930s found in the center's archive. In the 1930s, even before the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were often perceived as a space of autocracy, while the United States represented the empire of freedom and democracy. In the context of the Great Depression and the inter-racial tensions preceding the Civil Rights Movement, many American intellectuals, however, expressed their admiration for the Soviet Union. The latter was seen, especially by African-American intellectuals, as a space of equality where racism did not exist. Joy Gleason Carew calls this mirage “the Soviet promise” (4), a promise that strengthened the USSR’s influence in Africa and later attracted black students and professionals to countries behind the Iron Curtain. During the research stage, the CSAM representative created a digital archive of these types of writings, focusing especially on the works of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Childress.

2023

Researching America from Timișoara 2023: Community-Building, Innovation, Internationalization

Project code: FAIDG-3-2023

Project leader: Cristina Chevereșan

Period: 2023–2024

Supported by: Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

Researching America from Timișoara 2023 was designed to support the institutional development of the American Studies Center, established at West University of Timișoara in late 2022. The project brought U.S.-based scholars and academic professionals to Timișoara for training sessions, workshops, lectures, and exchanges of expertise in areas ranging from research development and grant applications to curriculum design, academic publishing, international mobility, and institutional partnerships. Its broader goal was to strengthen CSAM's capacity as a sustainable research community and to develop lasting academic connections between West University of Timișoara and partner institutions in the United States.

Crisis in American Popular Culture

Project code: P008194

Project coordinator: Loredana Bercuci

Fulbright Specialist: Steven Conn, Miami University

Period: 24 March–8 April 2023

Supported by: Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

Crisis in American Popular Culture explored representations of crisis and the ways in which popular culture shapes public understandings of historical, social, and political change. Fulbright Specialist Steven Conn worked with BA and MA students through workshops that developed critical approaches to film, media, history, and civic engagement. Movies as Historical Sources introduced American Studies students to film as a primary source for historical analysis, while Fantasies of Destruction: The Urban Crisis in Popular Culture examined representations of urban crisis. Conn also engaged faculty in discussions about the pedagogical study of crisis, drawing on his research on rural America. The project strengthened students' media literacy, cultural awareness, and critical engagement with contemporary public discourse.

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