Adriana Dana D P Listes Pop (original) (raw)

Papers by Adriana Dana D P Listes Pop

JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN LITERARY STUDIES Issue no. 5/2014

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore a range of travel documents about Romania publi... more Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore a range of travel documents about Romania published in English literature starting with the XIX century up to the present and try to extract and analyze the image of Romania as perceived and depicted by the foreign travelers in different historical and political contexts, capturing the process of its development through time. For a more balanced approach, the selection of the documents analyzed draw on four different historical and political periods starting with the end of the XIX century titles, passing through the interwar period in the first half of the XX century, continuing with the accounts taken in the communist period and finishing with the modern, democratic Romania depicted after 1989. The investigation begins with the volumes titled A Winter in the City of Pleasure. Life on the Lower Danube published by Florence K. Burger in 1877, Three Years in Roumania written by J. W. Ozanne in 1878, Roumania: Past and Present written by James Samuelson in 1882 and Untrodden Paths in Roumania signed by Mary Adelaide Walker in 1888. It continues with the travel accounts recorded during the XX century, Roumania Yesterday and To-day published by Will Gordon in 1918, Twenty Years in Roumania signed by Maude Parkinson in 1921, Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Middle Danube to the Iron Gate written by Patrick Leigh Fermor in the interwar period and issued in 1986. From the works published in the communist period, Dracula Country. Travels and Folk Beliefs in Romania signed by Andrew Mackenzie in 1977 will be taken into account. From after the Revolution, the modern English travel literature about the country analyzed here includes the volumes Along the Enchanted Way: a Romanian Story signed by William Blacker and The Way of the Crosses published by Peter Hurley at the end of 2013.
Keywords: Romania, past, travel literature, Transylvania, present

Abstract: This paper is about the challenges that technology, new media and the Internet have mad... more Abstract: This paper is about the challenges that technology, new media and the Internet have made on education forcing it to become more flexible. ICT development has offered the possibility to embed technology in the learning environments as it is widely known that students use it to communicate on daily basis. The modern educational methods incorporate new technology and new media in a more personalized, interactive and flexible delivery for a more efficient learning achievement. In the study titled Teaching as a Design Science. Building Pedagogical Patterns for Learning and Technology, Diana Laurillard analyses the impact of the technology development on education which according to her was rather a ”shock” (Laurillard 2012, 2) that forced the educational system to adapt and embed it for better learning outcomes applying to all forms of knowledge: analytical, experiential, experimental. According to Collins and Halverson in the volume Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America, ICT development started the ”Knowledge Revolution” in view of the fact that ”technology is moving education out of schools and into homes and workplaces” (Colllins, Halverson 2009,6) .

Keywords: Flexible Learning, Personalized and Collaborative Learning, Participatory Learning, E-learning, Web of Learning

Abstract: This paper analyzes the origins of advertising encoding and decoding processes identifi... more Abstract: This paper analyzes the origins of advertising encoding and decoding processes identified in
the Renaissance culture approached by Ioan Petru Culianu in his works, especially in the volume Eros
and Magic in the Renaissance. 1484. As a historian of religions and an imaginary analyst, he studied
the role of the fantasy in the human cognition process and the connection between religious and
magical procedures. The Renaissance culture was focused on the science of the magic, framework
within which humans were perceived as image processors in an input-output mechanism meant to
produce intended reactions and results. The magicians used to attach an intention to a particular
image delivered to a subject which determined an automatic reaction within his mind that was then
exploited by the operator. This is similar to the mechanism of encoding and decoding processes used
in the advertising industry meant to influence the consumer’s behavior and his perception on a
particular commodity. It is the process of attaching a symbolical value to an object that is afterwards
absorbed into the consumer’s sphere of stored meanings and former experiences to generate a
synthesis and afterwards instrument this artificial desire placed into the consumer’s mind to make him
want that object and finally buy it.
Keywords: cultural system, signs, symbols, magic, encoding and decoding.

This paper analyzes the short stories published by Ioan Petru Culianu in a range of periodicals i... more This paper analyzes the short stories published by Ioan Petru Culianu in a range of periodicals issued
in Romania and abroad such as: Cronica, Luceafarul, Erato / Harvard Book Review, Exquisite
Corpse, Achab, Leggere and Agora. The first category of short stories written within the country was
published in the communist period, included in the volume The Art of Fugue. The second category of
literary journalism consists in the short prose pieces published in the cultural and literary magazines
abroad, brought together in the volume La Collezione di Smeraldi published in Italy, reprinted in
Romania under the title The Diaphanous Parchment. The Last Stories. The theories of fictionality
consider the lack of truthfulness to be the main characteristic of fiction, meant to immerse the reader
into a different reality by using specific narrative discursive processes based on the reading complicity
understood as a ”suspending disbelief” strategy in the way Coleridge coined it. In his early short
stories, Ioan Petru Culianu seems to make concessions on plausibility expressing reality as a symbolic
representation of the objective reality encoded into symbolic objects functioning as leitmotifs, while in
the maturity stories he makes a shift towards more authentic fictional narratives built on historical
characters such as John the Cappadocian, Horemheb, Ibn Gubair, and Raymundus Lullus. The paper
aims to point out the way Ioan Petru Culianu’s literary journalism plays the game of concealing and
revealing information depending on the society he lived in, considering that in the first category of his
short narratives written in the communist period the author builds imaginary worlds where he seeks
refuge from an unbearable reality, whilst the maturity short narratives become revealing, being
conceived as warnings or predictions. Going through his literary journalism, the reader can see Ioan
Petru Culianu evolving from a vulnerable young creator, retractable and sensitive to a mature writer,
self-confident, motivated by the intent to recover and improve the reality of the native country he
escaped from.
Keywords: Literary Journalism, Narrative Discursive Processes, Suspension of Disbelief, Concealing
and Revealing Game

Abstract: Mass communication impacted the modern society in a way never imagined taking into acco... more Abstract: Mass communication impacted the modern society in a way never imagined taking into
account that the advent of television followed by the emergence of the Internet combined with the
digital technology development completely changed the global communication landscape. The impact
on the public and the way it thinks and perceives reality is truly significant as mass communication
audience is fragmented, anonymous, an oversized collective entity spatially atomized among which the
media takes the role of ”a magic window” (Harris 2004, 3) or of ”a selective mirror” (Baran 2004,
417). In the cognitive approach, mass communication is analyzed in terms of attitudinal and
behavioral changes induced to the audience and the concept of ”mental reality” coined by Harris
means the worldview is extracted from the media and that the immediate reality is filtered by the
media artificially constructed reality. Media is widely understood as a tool for reflecting the reality,
being compared with a mirror or a window, and consequently people’s view on objective reality can
be molded by the media delivery. In the study A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication, Harris
sees media as a perceived reality and marks the characteristics of the artificial reality that media
inputs in the audience’s minds. Harris analyzes the cognitive processes that are taking place while the
audience is actively engaged with the media, among which attention regards the selection process of
the information that is to be consumed, while suspending disbelief is understood as a “social
convention” taking the form of an agreement between the audience and the media producers on the
story and characters which are accepted in order to experience their feelings. This paper aims to
analyze the media consumption and the Internet usage in Romania based on the report titled
Measuring the Information Society launched in October 2013 by the International Telecommunication
Union.
Keywords: Media Consumption, Mental Reality, Magic Window, Online Audience, Digital Natives.

The volume Reporter at the End of the World contains nonfiction literature, stories written and p... more The volume Reporter at the End of the World contains nonfiction literature, stories written and published by Nistorescu in newspapers and magazines between 1978-1988. Reporter at the end of the world republishes his previous books Happenings in the Silence of a Photography / Întâmplări în liniștea unei fotografii (Reporter Collection XV, Junimea, Iași, 1978), Provisional Paradise / Paradisul provizoriu (Albatros, București, 1982), and The Owner of Illusions / Proprietarul de iluzii (Cartea Românească, București, 1988). The stories are taken down on the field as Nistorescu was a field journalist covering the events and reporting on the scene in those years. He talked to people working at building sites, in mines, factories, hospitals, at sea, inmates detained in prison, and depicted events and real characters: Lady Beti and the Judgment Day, The Mornings and the Springs of a Lowland Man, A Man and a Horse Connecting the Village Albac to Six Continents.

The study Mass Media in Revolution and National Development: the Romanian Laboratory emerged in t... more The study Mass Media in Revolution and National Development: the Romanian Laboratory emerged in the early 1990’s after a series of working trips to East-Central Europe financed by U.S. Information Agency, Voice of America, International Media Fund, and Freedom Forum. The book was awarded the American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences Book Award in 1996. Peter Gross arrived in Romania a few days after the Revolution aiming to find out the way Romanians would take back and recreate its mass media system. The author provides a detailed examination of the period between 1990 and 1996 and the changes occurring in the former communist Romania, viewed as an interesting and rich laboratory (Gross 1996, ix) for researching journalism development in a post-communist background.

Media convergence should be understood as a cultural process, rather than as a technological end-... more Media convergence should be understood as a cultural process, rather than as a technological end-point because ”Convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content” (Jenkins 2006, 3). Convergence argues Jenkins ”should not be understood primarily as a technological process bringing together multiple media functions within the same devices”, but as a cultural shift as ”convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others” (2006, 3). Media is defined as a combination of two different parts coming together: the technology that enables communication through delivery technologies and so called ”associated protocols” consisting in social, cultural and economic relationships and practices generated by the new technology (2006, 13). While delivery technology gets outdated and is replaced at certain times, media survives, becomes adapted and coexists as layers in the media ecosystem.

In the columns published by Ioan Petru Culianu in the foreign media he proved to be concerned wit... more In the columns published by Ioan Petru Culianu in the foreign media he proved to be concerned with the threat of illicit dominance, totalitarianism, intolerance and racism. The major part of his political and cultural articles were published in the Romanian language magazines Free World, Agora, Limits, Meridian, Ethos and in the foreign languages magazines Panorama, Mondoperaio and Nouvelle Acropole and the scientific studies were published in international journals such as Aevum, Dialogue, Neophilologus. In the political articles, Culianu tried to analyze the concepts of totalitarianism, communism, and racism and its origins as well as the individual’s right to resources and power and where that claim could become illegal and dangerous for the others. In this regard, the column The Racist Offence, original title L’offense raciste is an historical argumentative discourse within which Culianu analyzes the racism origins in the international context. The article was published in January 1985 in the French magazine Nouvelle Acropole. Culianu absolutely acknowledges himself as a “convinced anti-racist” right from the beginning and claims he is a total supporter of the democratic system as the ideal option for the most functional modern society. Culture, religion and politics are subtly connected in nowadays society as racist attitude is generated by wrong beliefs, ethereal ideas and massive intolerance. Racism is a phenomenon explained as having its origins in prejudices and preconceptions, it stems from inability to accept equal rights and mutual understanding, arrogance, perfidy and lack of respect for the human being.

JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN LITERARY STUDIES Issue no. 5/2014

Keywords: Flexible Learning, Personalized and Collaborative Learning, Participatory Learning, E-learning, Web of Learning