Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai
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The Origin of Transylvanian Romanians in Saxon Historiography (1848-1938)
Full text linkThe paper aims to explore how the medieval history of Romanians in Transylvania is reflected in the Saxon historiography of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first four decades of the twentieth century. In order to understand the motivations behind the different historiographical perspectives and aspects related to the political and social context of Transylvania, the text contains brief references to a number of works written in different historical and social contexts, with very different authors, methodologies, presuppositions and results. Without claiming to provide an exhaustive description of the reception of this theme in Saxon historiography, the article highlights various aspects of the way in which the theme of the origins of the Transylvanian Romanians has been treated by Saxon historians, drawing attention to the heterogeneous nature of the literature devoted to this theme in the Saxon area. Finally, my research aims at answering the question of the existence of a unitary (or at least dominant) perspective in Saxon historiography on the history of the Transylvanian Romanians in the Middle Ages, interrogating the particularities of such an approach and trying to identify its position within the inter-ethnic historiographical debate on the origin of the Transylvanian Romanians.
Rezumat: Lucrarea își propune să exploreze modul în care istoria medievală a românilor din Transilvania se reflectă în istoriografia saxonă din a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea și din primele patru decenii ale secolului al XX-lea. Pentru a înțelege motivațiile din spatele diferitelor perspective istoriografice și aspectele legate de contextul politic și social al Transilvaniei, textul conține scurte referiri la o serie de lucrări scrise în contexte istorice și sociale diferite, cu autori, metodologii, presupuneri și rezultate foarte diferite. Fără a pretinde că oferă o descriere exhaustivă a receptării acestei teme în istoriografia săsească, articolul evidențiază diverse aspecte ale modului în care tema originilor românilor din Transilvania a fost tratată de istoricii sași, atrăgând atenția asupra naturii eterogene a literaturii dedicate acestei teme în zona germană. În final, cercetarea își propune să răspundă la întrebarea privind existența unei perspective unitare (sau cel puțin dominante) în istoriografia săsească asupra istoriei românilor din Transilvania în Evul Mediu, interogând particularitățile unei astfel de abordări și încercând să identifice poziția acesteia în cadrul dezbaterii istoriografice interetnice privind originea românilor din Transilvania.
Cuvinte cheie: istorie etnică; istoriografie; studii medievale; teoria imigraționistă
INTRODUCTION: POST-NOVEL/POST-SEMIOTIC/POST-DISPOSITIF IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. A WORLD-SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE
Full text linkMany of the theoretical fundamentals developed for literary and cultural studies throughout the twentieth century have become less efficacious. In recent decades, scholars have, indeed, investigated the transformations of storytelling and cultural consumption in the digital age. However, this issue looks to further explore the future of literary and cultural studies from a world-systems perspective with a focus on the alterations of novelistic narratives in the larger context of the supplanting of liberal, humanistic, sense-making mechanisms by computational regimes of meaning. In this context, we would like to investigate 1) the decline of the category of the “novel” for long-form fiction, 2) interpretive methods grounded on semiotics, and 3) the claims for truth-formations through Michel Foucault’s notion of the apparatus/dispositif. Today we assume all long fictions are novels because of the way this form so adeptly housed and reconfigured liberalism’s divisions. The novel could promote public-oriented national imaginaries and fictions of manifest destinies while plumbing the depths of privatizing desire by listening for interior signals. As liberalism promoted the self-enacting individual as the bulwark against the tyranny of the majority, the novel promoted the corresponding ideals of autonomous authors’ unique genius and stylistic signatures. Such was the novel’s success and dominance of liberal print culture that it managed to marginalize other forms of narrative, making them residual (the epic), or pushing them into the social subordination of “genre,” understood as the realm of para-literature and pulp or lowbrow production. Yet, all the cultural languages that were once dominant lose their magnetic authority. The novel today, for instance, is now shaped by its nemesis through what is called the genre turn, wherein prestige writers adapt the para literature of supernatural, fantasy, and science-fiction as a form better equipped to register and respond to the current moment
PLATFORMISING STORYTELLING: SHORT FICTION, NEOLIBERAL IMMEDIACY, AND TWITCH STREAMING IN ROMANIA
Full text linkPlatformising Storytelling: Short Fiction, Neoliberal Immediacy, and Twitch Streaming in Romania. In light of the neoliberal ascent of platform capitalism, storytelling is undergoing an unmatched metamorphosis noticeable even in semi-peripheral cultures, including Romania’s. From a methodological standpoint, we examine these literary and cultural transformations by situating a particular case study within the ideological frameworks of neoliberal capitalism as it manifests on streaming platforms. Our case study focuses on reallyrux’s Twitch and YouTube series “Cine-i janghina?” (“Who’s the Asshole?”), where audiences submit allegedly autobiographical short stories based on preestablished themes, focused on multi-sided conflicts. The host reads and discusses the stories in live streams, playfully evaluating their style while suggesting that the show enhances her audience’s literary knowledge, thus positioning the series as both participatory entertainment and an informal workshop. Consequently, the study’s aim is three-fold: first, to analyse the interrelationship between the literary and the digital, in particular, platform-based content; second, to investigate the revitalisation of the short story genre through participatory digital practices in the context of the prevalent trend of creative writing workshops in Romania; and third, to assess the immediacy-driven nature of post-millennial storytelling and its broader ideological implications. By exploring the intersection of platform media, participatory culture, and literary production, this paper sheds light on the evolving boundaries of storytelling in the age of platform capitalism.
REZUMAT. Platformizarea povestirii: proză scurtă, imediatețe neoliberală și streaming de Twitch în România. În lumina ascensiunii neoliberale a capitalismului de platformă, narațiunea trece printr-o metamorfoză de neegalat, vizibilă chiar și în culturile semi-periferice, precum cea românească. Din punct de vedere metodologic, vom examina aceste transformări literare și culturale prin plasarea unui studiu de caz particular în cadrele ideologice ale capitalismului neoliberal așa cum se manifestă pe platformele de streaming. Studiul nostru de caz abordează emisiunea de pe Twitch și YouTube a lui reallyrux, „Cine-i janghina?”, unde spectatorii trimit scurte povestiri așa-zis autobiografice, având la bază teme prestabilite, axate pe conflicte plurivalente. Gazda citește și discută poveștile în cadrul live stream-urilor, evaluând în glumă stilul lor și sugerând în același timp că emisiunea îmbunătățește cunoștințele literare ale publicului, situând-o astfel atât ca divertisment participativ, cât și ca atelier informal. În consecință, scopul studiului nostru este triplu: în primul rând, să analizeze relația mutuală a literarului și digitalului, mai exact, a conținutului bazat pe platforme; în al doilea rând, să investigheze revitalizarea genului prozei scurte în contextul tendinței predominante a atelierelor de scriere creativă din România și a practicilor digitale participative; și, în al treilea rând, să evalueze natura imediateții povestirii post-mileniale și implicațiile sale ideologice mai ample. Prin explorarea intersecției dintre platformele media, cultura participativă și producția literară, această lucrare deslușește modul în care limitele narațiunii se dezvoltă în era capitalismului de platformă.
Cuvinte-cheie: proză scurtă, autobiografie, social media, Twitch, Youtube, capitalism de platformă, neoliberalism, semi-periferie, Europa Centrală și de Est.
Article history: Received 10 June 2025; Revised 20 August 2025; Accepted 30 August 2025; Available online 24 September 2025; Available print 30 September 2025
Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas, and Stephen Shapiro, Decolonizing the Undead: Rethinking Zombies in World Literature, Film and Media, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, 224 p.
Full text linkThis collection of essays, edited by Giulia Champion, Roxanne Douglas and Stephen Shapiro, comes as a contribution towards a decolonizing movement that differentiates itself from the postcolonial attitude. As Shapiro points out, starting from a contrast expressed by Nick Couldry and adding a ‘Warwick School perspective’, whereas postcolonialism posited a colonial endeavor that focused on difference as a mechanism for meaning-creating epistemic violence, decolonizing goes beyond criticizing “capitalism, globalism, and neoliberalism” by aiming to find “intellectual resources from beyond the Western Canon”, especially if they come from the ‘Global South’ (2023, 40-41). To be specific about the Warwick School perspective adopted here, Shapiro explains a fundamentally world-systems-based approach towards capitalism that reveals it to be a system which “operates through the creation of social inequalities (rather than simply social differences) to achieve its drive for endless accumulation for accumulation’s sake” (41). Furthermore, the decolonizing approach recognizes that capitalism inherently functions because of weakly proletarianized labor, as much as the centrist liberalism he critiques in the third chapter would theorize otherwise (41). The reason for the necessity of this theoretical preamble is the fact that it reflects upon the other entries into this collection. As much as a claim can be made for the individuality of the perspective, the methodology and of the cultural material chosen to be discussed on the part of each author, engaging in the (same) specific endeavor of decolonizing the figure of the zombie in World Culture requires shared fundamental values and perspectives towards said figure that can be found in Shapiro’s more theoretical essay. To clarify and reiterate, it is not a case of uniformity, but rather an interplay of nuance that lets each author complement or contrast the work of their co-contributors
Christinna Hazzard, Semi-Peripheral Realism. Nation and Form on the Borders of Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 230 p.
Full text linkChristinna Hazzard’s 2024 study, Semi-Peripheral Realism: Nation and Form on the Borders of Europe, undertakes the ambitious task of navigating the shifting frontiers of world literature, aiming to chart its unexplored and neglected territories and provide—if not new, then at least renewed—insights and interest in the field. Focusing on the semi-periphery and drawing on the theoretical frameworks and methods of Fredric Jameson and Franco Moretti, Christinna Hazzard sets out to investigate the asynchronous development of global capitalism, seeking to demonstrate how this otherwise abstract “unevenness” (1) has taken concrete shape within–and has, in turn, reshaped–both literature and literary theory
Foreword
Full text linkThe present issue of Studia Dramatica aims to approach theater and performing arts from the perspective of the richness and variety of current research goals. Entitled „Directions, targets and interrogations in contemporary Theatre Studies”, it can offer to its readers a glimpse of important directions in which the interest of contemporary researchers go, in theatre as well as in film studies. What are the topics that concern us today in the field of theater and performing arts or at the intersection between the performing, the visual or the cinematic arts? Are researchers nowadays more interested in theater history or in analyzing contemporary phenomena? Does their interest go more towards monographic, documentary or comparative studies? Text, performance or audience analysis? Technological evolution or a more in-depth study of classical techniques? What methods do we consider to be the most valid in research today? These are a few questions that challenged us and we thus invited practitioners, as well as researchers, to contribute to their main fields of interest
Independent Dance in Cluj-Napoca: Organizational Strategies and Audience Dynamics
Full text linkWith two primary research questions in mind, this study investigates Cluj-Napoca’s independent dance culture: “How do available resources (human, financial, and logistical) influence the organization and operational strategies of dance studios?” and “How aware, interested, and involved is Cluj’s audience, and what influences their behaviour as public or students?” The study reveals a varied but vulnerable sector through a questionnaire with 85 respondents and four interviews with cultural dance space managers. Sustainability is impacted by several factors, including a lack of consistent resources, difficulties with promoting the opportunities, lack of support from the local administration, and the strain of operating in uncertain and unpredictable circumstances. Every studio operates using its own flexible structure, and there is no set organisational model. Even though there is public interest, low visibility and restricted information available continue to be major obstacles to wider involvement. The results highlight the necessity of better coordination among cultural actors and more support from local authorities. The dance scene in Cluj-Napoca may have a more sustainable future if these ties are strengthened
On the coefficient estimates for a subclass of m-fold symmetric bi-univalent functions
Full text linkIn this work, we introduce and investigate a subclass of analytic and bi-univalent functions when both f and f-1 are m-fold symmetric in the open unit disk U. The results presented in this paper would generalize and improve those that were given in several recent works.
Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 30C45, 30C50.
Received 12 November 2024; Accepted 31 May 2025
Existence results for nonlinear anisotropic elliptic partial differential equations with variable exponents
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The focus of this paper will be on studying the existence of solutions in the sense of distribution, for a class of nonlinear partial differential equations defined by a variable exponent anisotropic elliptic operator with a growth condition given by a strictly positive continuous real function. The functional setting involves variable exponents anisotropic Sobolev spaces.
Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 35J60, 35J66, 35J67.
Received 28 January 2025; Accepted 10 June 2025
A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Music Theory Textbooks
Full text linkThis study proposes a novel framework for the comparative analysis of music theory textbooks, with particular focus on harmony instruction in Hungarian secondary-level music education. The research addresses a critical gap in both national and international scholarship: despite the acknowledged pedagogical importance of textbooks, no comprehensive comparative analysis exists that evaluates their structural and didactic dimensions within the discipline of music theory. Drawing from Ágnes Dárdai’s influential work in textbook analysis, the study adapts her comparative methodology to meet the specific demands of music pedagogy. The analysis is structured into three methodological phases: macrostructural examination, microstructural analysis of selected chapters, and evaluation of thematic coherence with particular attention to the treatment of chords borrowed from the parallel minor. This framework contributes to the evolving discourse on textbook theory, curricular alignment, and the role of disciplinary specificity in educational materials