Proiecte / Projects
Fulbright Institutional Development Grant
- Researching America from Timișoara 2023: Community-Building, Innovation, Internationalization (FAIDG-3-2023) - Project leader: Prof. dr. habil. Cristina Chevereșan
The project aims to support capacity-building strategies for West University of Timișoara’s recently opened (end of 2022) American Studies Research Center (CSAM). The center’s team (composed of faculty and graduate students of the American Studies Program of the West University of Timisoara) will benefit from expertise, counseling, best practices examples of American specialists in some of the Center’s key target-areas: research project development, effective research grant applications, academic journal coordination and editing, graduate and undergraduate program management, curriculum development, institutional research and teaching partnerships, faculty and student mobility to/from the U.S., fundraising.
The project’s specific, practical aspiration is to establish working relations with our U.S. partners in order to develop the expertise of the CSAM’s team in a sustainable manner by consolidating the institutional framework for partnerships with U.S. institutions through such actions as initiating an Erasmus + student and staff mobility agreement.
We intend to address the Center’s practical needs by inviting to WUT American colleagues with significant academic, as well managerial experience in education and research by:
Organizing a series of training sessions for CSAM members, regarding the aforementioned topics.
Meeting the university community in extenso, in a series of conferences/workshops related to their own study and research topics.
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Proiectul își propune să susțină consolidarea Centrului de Studii Americane (CSAM), deschis la sfârșitul anului 2022 în cadrul Universității de Vest din Timișoara. Echipa centrului, compusă din cadre didactice, de cercetare și doctoranzi ai programului de Studii Americane al Facultății de Litere, Istorie și Teologie, va beneficia de expertiza, consultanța și exemplele de bune practici ale specialiștilor americani în ce privește ariile de interes ale centrului: dezvoltarea proiectelor de cercetare, dezvoltarea unor propuneri de grant de succes, coordonarea și editarea unei reviste științifice, managementul unui program de studiu, dezvoltarea curriculum-ului, parteneriate inter-instituționale de cercetare și de studiu, mobilitatea cadrelor didactice și a studenților din/spre S.U.A., atragerea de fonduri, etc.
Obiectivele specifice și practice ale proiectului sunt de a întări relațiile centrului cu partenerii americani, cu scopul de a dezvolta expertiza echipei CSAM într-un mod sustenabil, prin consolidarea cadrului instituțional pentru parteneriate cu instituții americane, precum inițierea de acorduri de mobilitate Erasmus +.
Ne propunem să răspundem nevoilor centrului invitând la UVT colegi americani cu experiență academică și managerială remarcabilă în domeniul cercetării și al educației prin:
Organizarea de sesiuni de training pentru membrii CSAM pe subiectele menționate mai sus
Prelegeri și workshop-uri pentru comunitatea extinsă a UVT
Fulbright Specialist Project 2023 (P008194)
Crisis in American Popular Culture - Project coordinator: Asist. dr. Loredana Bercuci
Between March 24 and April 8, 2023, the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology at the West University of Timisoara hosted prof. Steven Conn (Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, U.S.A.) via the Fulbright Specialist project “Crisis in American Popular Culture”. The project was coordinated by Dr. Loredana Bercuci and carried out within the framework of the American Studies Center. It focused on an important contemporary issue in American culture, as well as globally: representations of and reactions to crisis.
The current world situation has prompted varied representations of crises in popular culture that have an impact on civic and political engagement. In Romania, Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, and a recent wave of immigration have determined many students to be interested in crisis and trauma. Steven Conn taught students at the West University of Timișoara how to approach representations of crisis in popular media critically, imparted knowledge, and trained competencies needed to understand the underpinnings of the discourse of crisis within two workshops aimed at BA and MA students. The first one, “Movies as Historical Sources,” introduced the American Studies MA students to means of approaching films (for example, The Best Years of Our Lives or Do the Right Thing) as primary sources for the analysis of crisis from a historical point of view. The second workshop, “Fantasies of Destruction: The Urban Crisis in Popular Culture”, was part of the international student conference organized by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures for undergraduate and graduate students, The Symposium of Students in English.
Prof. Conn also gave a talk to the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures’ faculty, based on his latest book (The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t, University of Chicago Press, 2023), on how to approach crisis pedagogically in order to help students become engaged citizens when dealing with crises. All three workshops offered examples on how to motivate students, providing opportunities for self-directed learning related to an issue of interest to them, and on how to develop media literacy, cultural awareness, as well as civic and political engagement.