Panel Proposal: “Culture, Legacy, and National Consciousness, and the Creation of the Modern Romanian State” for Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, January 3-6, 2019

Ruxandra Canache Discussion

In the aftermath of the Great War, new political entities emerged. On December 1st 1918, The National Assembly at Alba Iulia proclaimed the unity of all territories inhabited by Romanians and laid the foundation for the modern Romanian state. Compared with Romania before the First World War, Greater Romania was another country. It had doubled its territory, almost tripled its population, and altered significantly its ethnic component. The proclamation of Alba Iulia insisted on a wide range of principles and forward looking reforms, but their implementation process was slow and at times, totally absent. This  unique historical moment arguably represents in a nutshell the issues and dimensions associated with questions of a Romanian identity, a national consciousness and culture, the place of intellectuals in Romanian public life, as well as the politics, policies, and economics of Romanian development, including in comparative and international perspective.

This panel welcomes proposals on topics related to the Great Union Day. Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • unification in comparison with other unifications, both past and present,
  • unification and its legacies on minorities and diasporas
  • challenges of integration
  • sources and archives
  • culture, ideology, social and education policies
  • writers, artists and the arts in fascism, communism and post-communism
  • the connections between Romania and Moldova
  • the reconfiguration of social stratification
  • post-communist media and journalism
  • the role of the Orthodox Church and of other religious groups
  • dynamics of migration from and into Romania and Moldova
  • urban policies and architecture: 1918, communism, and post-communism
  • party and electoral politics, voting behavior, policy analysis and administration

Please send a short abstract of up to 300 words and a short biographical paragraph of 250 words to ruxandra.canache@mail.mcgill.ca by February 13, 2018. For further information, see: https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/governance/policies-and-documents-of-the-association/annual-meeting-guidelines, and https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting/future-meetings/submit-a-proposal

Loyalty and disloyalty are forms of human attachment often associated with the history of politics. Yet loyalties function on multiple levels. Individually, or in groups, humans commit themselves to communities, loved ones, principles, a leader, a nation, a religion, an ideology, or an identity. Loyalties stabilize human society, undergird political and social hierarchies, promote courage and cowardice, disguise ethical lapses, and generate revolutions. The determination to maintain old loyalties or devise new ones can become a foundation for building nations, waging war, transforming and imagining new forms of human community, or defending institutions that maintain traditional ways of life.

Loyalties require communication, ritual, and imagery. They can be hegemonic or the outcome of powerful shifts in popular consciousness. Loyalties can also be disseminated through the propagation of ideas, or take the form of nostalgia, distracting from contemporary problems or complexities. Whether social, cultural, religious, economic, or political, loyalties can conceive a path to a utopian future, identifying those who are an impediment to that future as disloyal or as permanently loyal to an outsider group. Divided loyalties might also pose a problem: At what point, for example, can loyalty to party, faith, or community overwhelm loyalty to the nation?

We are interested in proposals that compare questions of conflicting or changing loyalties across time, space, and human experience—whether religious, ethnic, gendered, national, or otherwise—and how they have shaped trajectories of change. After a revolution, opponents of the new regime are often faced with a choice between swearing allegiance—thus betraying the values and leaders to whom they had promised loyalty—and imprisonment, exile, or execution. In contrast to such formal public dilemmas, loyalties that regulate private life can involve forms of expectation and obedience that are often unspoken, generationally specific, or resisted as archaic.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 11:59 p.m. PST, February 15, 2018 (07:59 GMT, February 16, 2018). If you encounter technical difficulties, please e-mail technical support. All data entry issues reported before the deadline will be resolved.