Books and edited volumes by Emanuel Modoc
Încercând să facă accesibil un bogat corpus de texte reunite într-un cadru coerent, ediţia de faţ... more Încercând să facă accesibil un bogat corpus de texte reunite într-un cadru coerent, ediţia de faţă cuprinde o selecţie cvasi-exhaustivă, reprezentativă şi definitorie atât pentru poezia şi publicistica de tinereţe ale lui Paul Păun, cât şi pentru activitatea sa teoretico-programatică din interiorul Grupului Suprarealist Român.
Book Chapters (EN) by Emanuel Modoc
Drawing from recent explorations in the field of transnational studies and revisiting a series of... more Drawing from recent explorations in the field of transnational studies and revisiting a series of conventional interpretations made in the autochthonous critical discourse, this study explores the various ways in which the Romanian avant-garde approached themes and motifs belonging to rurality, be it from an anti-mimetic stance, against the grain of Romanian traditionalist aesthetics emerging in the first two decades of the twentieth century or from an ethnographical standpoint, in the manner discussed by James Clifford in his analysis of “ ethnographic Surrealism ” (as an activity engaged in rearranging reality against the general cultural consensus). With aspects such as identitarian self-validation in the international avant-garde scene on one hand, and the negotiation of internal literary heritage in the process of nation building on the other, my chapter follows the strategies employed by a series of influential Romanian avant-garde writers in their process of mediating the local and the global in their respective poetic projects.
The Culture of Translation in Romania/ Übersetzungskultur und Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien, 2018
This essay investigates, by means of quantitative research, the reception of Futurism in the Roma... more This essay investigates, by means of quantitative research, the reception of Futurism in the Romanian cultural space of the first half of the twentieth century. By analyzing the transnational network of the Futurist manifestos in a localized, national circuit through rapid text translation and dissemination, the study closely follows the main temporal milestones of the reception of Futurism in Romania (from its earliest occurrence to its 1930s climax, following F.T. Marinetti's visit to Romania) in order to assess the full extent of the impact of the artistic movement on Romanian literary journalism. At the same time, by drawing on Edward Said's concept of "traveling theory" (originating in his well-known 1982 essay), the study also tries to propose the idea of a "traveling avant-garde", materialized in Marinetti's own brand of cultural entrepreneurship that led to such welcoming reception in a country that had no discernible Futurist movement.
Papers (EN) by Emanuel Modoc
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, 2020
The present study proposes an experimental exploration of the Romanian novel written between 1920... more The present study proposes an experimental exploration of the Romanian novel written between 1920 and 1940 through the use of stylometry, a method of distant reading employed for the statistical analysis of style. Drawing from the most recent advances in the field of computational stylistics, we select a formal standpoint from which we seek to investigate the relation between the Romanian novelistic canon and minor, tertiary novels published in the same period. In our test cases, we will attempt to establish some of the more promising aspects of stylometric analysis, as well as single out the experiments that yield no relevant result. Because of the relative novelty of the method, the purpose of our investigations is to offer a kind of pilot experiment that can illustrate the benefits of using computational methods on Romanian literary corpora.
Interlitteraria, 2020
Following a two-pronged line of argumentation, our article seeks to analyze and evaluate the curr... more Following a two-pronged line of argumentation, our article seeks to analyze and evaluate the current state of quantitative approaches applied to Romanian literature within the context and framework of one of the most prominent emergent fields of literary studies: quantitative formalism. Thus, on the one hand, the paper will attempt to present the most well-known lexicographic instruments currently used in quantitative studies in Romania (The Chronological Dictionary, on the other, to employ the emerging methods that make use of these instruments, alongside their inherent limitations and the pragmatic issues that concern them) as a starting point for a debate on the current state of theoretical and critical approaches to the study of literature in the Romanian academic field. A selective and detailed application of the quantitative methodologies in question, as they are theorized by scholars such as Franco Moretti ("distant reading") or Matthew L. Jockers ("macroanalysis") will be another focal point of our paper, as it will seek to further illustrate the manner in which a meta-reflection on the approach itself can encourage the further development of quantitative methods in the study of Romanian literature.
Revista Transilvania, 2019
Revista Transilvania, 2019
Following the developments in the field of transnational studies and World Literature, the presen... more Following the developments in the field of transnational studies and World Literature, the present study addresses the idea that, rather than comparing the different materializations of East-Central European literature with Western literature in a way that enforces an inherent power structure between the two elements, one should turn his attention to the neighboring literatures of the former and set aside the dominant discourse related to the latter. The historical avant-garde represents an important case in this respect. The presence of Jewish writers, the existence of several catalyzing cultural centers (France, Germany), and the occurrences of spatial displacements of authors from within these avant-gardes, as well as ideological affinities are factors that have consolidated a form of interliterary communication between the East-Central European avant-gardes that could provide a very strong case study in regard to early transnational dialogues between marginal national literatures. Drawing from what Tötösy de Zepetnek called “inbetween peripherality” and the most recent discussions revolving around the inherent internationality of the avant-garde movements, my paper seeks to adapt recent theories to the aforementioned geoliterary space and motivate why the avant-gardes belonging to this space are critical to the explanation of early transnational communications in the modern European culture.
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, 2017
My proposal aims to investigate the changes in the Romanian literary discourse on nature and the ... more My proposal aims to investigate the changes in the Romanian literary discourse on nature and the effects of industrialization following the 1989 revolution in comparison to the ideological discourse of the postwar era. If Romanian postwar literary discourse is firmly tied to the underlying ideology of Communism, then any attempt to investigate the discourse on nature in this period must be made alongside a reading of the Communist discourse on nature. In this respect, the situation of Romanian post-1989 prose that contains aspects of the influence of Communist industrialization on nature provides an interesting case study on the effects of the post-industrial era on literature itself. Thus, my proposal will focus on a number of novels written after 1989 in an ecocritical mode of reading.
Papers (RO) by Emanuel Modoc
Revista Transilvania, 2020
This article is part of a series that investigates through quantitative and geocritical means the... more This article is part of a series that investigates through quantitative and geocritical means the corpus of novels created by the research project Astra Data Mining. The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel 1901-1932 (around 370 novels digitized). One of the many foci of our analyses delves into the internal geography of the Romanian novel as it manifests itself through geolocated metadata that reveal the spatial diversity of the corpus, concerning not only plot setting, but also relating to the main topographical nodes underpinning the novelists’ consciousness. Because of such geolocational diversity, the following study will only deal with the national setting of the Romanian novel.
Revista Transilvania, 2019
Drawing from the most recent developments in the field of Digital Humanities, the article showcas... more Drawing from the most recent developments in the field of Digital Humanities, the article showcases some of the most promising methods as well as some of the most useful tools for computational textual analysis. Textometry, stylometry and network analysis (alongside topic modelling or distributional semantics) are nowadays methods that, through the recent developments in digital formalism proposed by Matthew L. Jockers or the researchers from Stanford Literary Lab, are able to reveal literary and cultural patterns at a macroanalytical method. The article will delve into computational stylistics by testing the Stylo package, developed by Maciej Eder, Jan Rybicki and Mike Kestemont, on a sample corpus provided by the ASTRA Data Mining Project, attempting to explore the merits of such methods in the field of Romanian literary studies.
Revista Transilvania, 2019
This article is part of the series that analyzes by employing research methods such as distant re... more This article is part of the series that analyzes by employing research methods such as distant reading and geocriticism the archive created by a team of young Romanian academics for the cultural and research project ASTRA Data Mining. The Digital Museum of the 19th Century Romanian Novel, implemented by ASTRA National Museum Complex. Our inquiry uses metadata regarding geolocations that was gathered while digitizing 157 novels published in Romania in the 19th century to bring forward their internal geographical universe and challenges the assumption that Romanian literature and especially the novel were mainly rural at the time.
Revista Transilvania, 2019
The present study assesses the existing archives that gather and preserve in digital versions the... more The present study assesses the existing archives that gather and preserve in digital versions the Romanian novel published in the 19 th century. Digitalization projects, both in Romania and in Europe, are the main subjects of this research. Adding to this, we share the particular and common experiences of the Astra Data Mining: The Digital Museum of the 19th Century Romanian Novel in terms of the process of digitizing the 157 novels in our corpus. Other details such as the specific editions digitized, the process of selection, as well as any difficulties met along the way are also provided. At the same time, the activities of our project are also corroborated with similar European projects. In order to address our digitization practice, we also explore a theoretical and methodological framework borrowed by Stanford Literary Lab in terms of conceptualizing what the American researchers call ”the published”, ”the archive” and ”the corpus”.
Transilvania, 2019
The present article seeks to present succinctly the current state of literary studies in the Roma... more The present article seeks to present succinctly the current state of literary studies in the Romanian cultural and academic space. Following the different paradigm shifts in Western literary theory, be it "the transnational turn", "the spatial turn" or recent developments in the field of World Literature studies, the paper tries to explain not only today's developments in critical trends, but also the conditions of the reception of these methodological turns in Romania. In what follows, I will provide a concise exposition of the most recent collective research projects developed in Romania, analysing their premises and anticipating their potential fulfilments for the evolution of critical theory in the autochthonous space.
Revista Transilvania, 2019
The study seeks to revisit the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde by exploring the histori... more The study seeks to revisit the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde by exploring the historical framework underpinning the development of both a consciousness of modernity at the turn of the twentieth century and a metacritical use of the concepts in contemporary literary historiographies across Europe and North America. In order to address these aspects, I will first look at what I call “regional modernisms”, with their particularities within their own national literary systems, in order to trace the beginnings of peripheral cultural perspectives on modernism; I will then investigate the relationship between modernism and the avant-garde as evidenced in mainstream European and American literary historiographies; finally, I will explore the internal relationship between modernism and the historical avant-garde, attempting to detect certain relational dynamics between the two movements. The purpose of my examination is not only to determine the unique nature of the avant-garde in the world literary system, but also to propose the idea that the development of modernism is closely linked to its contacts with the avant-garde.
Caietele avangardei, 2019
The study analyzes the ways ways in which the Romanian avant-garde approached themes and motifs b... more The study analyzes the ways ways in which the Romanian avant-garde approached themes and motifs belonging to rurality, be it from an anti-mimetic stance or from an ethnographical perspective, as James Clifford theorizes the concept in one of his most notable studies regarding Surrealism and ethnography. Keeping in mind aspects such as national self- validation in the international avant-garde scene and the need to negotiate the internal literary heritage in the process of forging a cultural identity, my paper follows the strategies employed by one of the most influential Romanian avant-garde poet of the interwar period, Geo Bogza, in his process of mediating the local and the global through ethnographic investigations attempted in his most well-known volume, Poemul Invectivă (The Invective Poem).
Caietele avangardei, 2019
The present article argues that the posterity of the Romanian surrealist movement from the 1940s ... more The present article argues that the posterity of the Romanian surrealist movement from the 1940s requires further evaluation that better contextualizes the movement in relationship to the boarder context of the global avant-garde. While authors such as Gherasim Luca, Paul Păun, D. Trost, Gellu Naum and Virgil Teodorescu have produced significant literary works valued in the historiographical discourse dedicated to the Romanian avant-garde, the movement’s true strength stems from a broader network established between the autochthonous movement and the European surrealist scene. As such, the importance of the individual developments of the Romanian surrealist artists (some of them migrating to other countries after the Second World War, others remaining, but ultimately abandoning, if temporary, their surrealist undertakings) are secondary to their relevance as a united group. Romanian surrealism is, among other “peripheral” surrealisms, one of the most important currents for the later evolution of post-War European avant-garde. Virgil Teodorescu is, in this context, a very particular figure in the history of the movement. While sharing the same socialist and militantist roots as the rest of his peers in his early literary works, his surrealist phase is more or less temporary and, in the grand scale, inconsequential to his own, individual literary development. This is why I consider Virgil Teodorescu’s surrealism as more of an “interregnum” than a definitive artistic maturation.
Transilvania, 2018
The present paper attempts to investigate the extent of which the Romanian historical avant-garde... more The present paper attempts to investigate the extent of which the Romanian historical avant-garde has constantly updated itself throughout history, starting from the early reiterations in the 40s and 50s and ending with the poetry of the 2000s. In order to demonstrate this, I will asses both the socio-cultural context of Romanian post-war and post-communist transition, as well as the evolution of literary forms that allowed for the constant “updates” of the historical avant-garde in Romanian poetry. This article also debates the thesis of Peter Bürger and the way it can be applied both to the historical avant-gardes and to the poetry of the 2000s, as contemporary poetry does present the same rebellious attitude towards the institutionalised literature of its precursors.
Transilvania, 2018
The present paper attempts to investigate the extent of which the Romanian historical avant-garde... more The present paper attempts to investigate the extent of which the Romanian historical avant-garde has constantly
updated itself throughout history, starting from the early reiterations in the 40s and 50s and ending with the poetry
of the 2000s. In order to demonstrate this, I will asses both the socio-cultural context of Romanian post-war and
post-communist transition, as well as the evolution of literary forms that allowed for the constant “updates” of the
historical avant-garde in Romanian poetry. This article also debates the thesis of Peter Bürger and the way it can be
applied both to the historical avant-gardes and to the poetry of the 2000s, as contemporary poetry does present the
same rebellious attitude towards the institutionalised literature of its precursors.
Caietele avangardei, 2018
This article attempts to explain the rather paradoxical mechanisms by which the Romanian avant-ga... more This article attempts to explain the rather paradoxical mechanisms by which the Romanian avant-garde current that belonged to the " unu " magazine tried to accumulate cultural capital by discarding their cultural opponents (the avant-garde artists of " Contimporanul " magazine) and moving towards establishing a closer relationship to more institutionalised literary models (best represented by the literary circle of " Sburătorul " , governed by Eugen Lovinescu). The main presuppositions of this study are approached by analysing both the programmatic texts of the avant-garde poets of " unu " magazine and the sporadic episodes in which avant-garde writers such as Ilarie Voronca, Stephan Roll, and Geo Bogza come into contact with the literary circle of " Sburătorul ".
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Books and edited volumes by Emanuel Modoc
Book Chapters (EN) by Emanuel Modoc
Papers (EN) by Emanuel Modoc
https://revistatransilvania.ro/configurations-of-transnationalism-in-east-central-european-avant-gardes/
https://revistatransilvania.ro/novels-as-big-data-a-genre-centric-approach-to-the-romanian-novel-1900-1940/
https://revistatransilvania.ro/what-is-digital-humanities-and-whats-it-doing-in-romanian-departments/
https://revistatransilvania.ro/the-literature-about-the-former-yugoslavia-in-the-paradigm-of-world-literature/
Papers (RO) by Emanuel Modoc
updated itself throughout history, starting from the early reiterations in the 40s and 50s and ending with the poetry
of the 2000s. In order to demonstrate this, I will asses both the socio-cultural context of Romanian post-war and
post-communist transition, as well as the evolution of literary forms that allowed for the constant “updates” of the
historical avant-garde in Romanian poetry. This article also debates the thesis of Peter Bürger and the way it can be
applied both to the historical avant-gardes and to the poetry of the 2000s, as contemporary poetry does present the
same rebellious attitude towards the institutionalised literature of its precursors.
https://revistatransilvania.ro/configurations-of-transnationalism-in-east-central-european-avant-gardes/
https://revistatransilvania.ro/novels-as-big-data-a-genre-centric-approach-to-the-romanian-novel-1900-1940/
https://revistatransilvania.ro/what-is-digital-humanities-and-whats-it-doing-in-romanian-departments/
https://revistatransilvania.ro/the-literature-about-the-former-yugoslavia-in-the-paradigm-of-world-literature/
updated itself throughout history, starting from the early reiterations in the 40s and 50s and ending with the poetry
of the 2000s. In order to demonstrate this, I will asses both the socio-cultural context of Romanian post-war and
post-communist transition, as well as the evolution of literary forms that allowed for the constant “updates” of the
historical avant-garde in Romanian poetry. This article also debates the thesis of Peter Bürger and the way it can be
applied both to the historical avant-gardes and to the poetry of the 2000s, as contemporary poetry does present the
same rebellious attitude towards the institutionalised literature of its precursors.
Deadline proposals (150-word abstract, 5-7 keywords, 3-5 theoretical references, 150-word bioprofile):Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory is an open-access, peer-review, online publication for academic research, published twice a year by the Faculty of Letters, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj, Romania. It promotes free-access for academic work and it welcomes authors who want to share their research and resources with their peers. It encourages, recognizes and rewards intellectual excellence in interdisciplinary and intermedial approaches of literary culture, visual culture and theory. The journal welcomes papers in English (or, for regionally oriented topics, Romanian) from the following domains: comparative studies, including digital and posthuman studies; literary studies, cultural studies, including social and gender studies; media and film studies, literary criticism and theory, cultural poetics.
http://www.metacriticjournal.com/files/CFP-MJCST-6.2.pdf
(the digital archive of the Romanian novel)
Baghiu, Ștefan, Vlad Pojoga, Cosmin Borza, Andreea Coroian Goldiș, Daiana Gârdan, Emanuel Modoc, David Morariu, Teodora Susarenco, Radu Vancu, and Dragoș Varga. Muzeul Digital al Romanului Românesc: secolul al XIX-lea [The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel: The 19th Century]. Sibiu: Complexul Național Muzeal ASTRA, 2019. https://revistatransilvania.ro/mdrr.