"Studia Europaea" (1)2020: "Old and New Conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa''/ "Anciens et nouveaux conflits en Afrique sub-saharienne"
Research Interests: African Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Terrorism, Postcolonial Studies, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, and 11 moreGovernance, Political Violence and Terrorism, Developing Countries, Political Violence, African Politics, Democratic Republic of Congo, Interethnic Relations, Afrique, Ivory Coast, Gestion Des Conflits, and Postcolonialism
Tracy Letts is one of the best-known and most successful American playwrights of the 21st century, having won critical and popular acclaim both for his writing and acting. August: Osage County, probably his most celebrated play, premiered... more
Tracy Letts is one of the best-known and most successful American playwrights of the 21st century, having won critical and popular acclaim both for his writing and acting. August: Osage County, probably his most celebrated play, premiered in 2007 and introduced the theater-going public to the dysfunctional Weston family, who reunite in a stifling, decaying Oklahoma mansion after the family patriarch’s suicide. The Westons’ familial crisis is manifested through addiction, violence, aggressiveness, adultery, rape and incest, each member having their own secrets and troubles. The present article aims, first, to examine how the characters deal with their personal crises and second, how the perceived sense of crisis and decline in the American society at large (both in a longer historical sense and in a sense contemporary to the events of the play) pushed family patriarch Beverly Weston to commit suicide out of a sense of profound hopelessness and disillusionment. Letts, by bringing fami...
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"The present article is built on the premise that both the British Empire in the 19th century (during its rivalry with Russia, known as the Great Game) and the United States in the 20th century treated Afghanistan as a means to... more
"The present article is built on the premise that both the British Empire in the 19th century (during its rivalry with Russia, known as the Great Game) and the United States in the 20th century treated Afghanistan as a means to an end in their quest to fulfil their strategic interests, without much concern for the country’s people, history and traditions, which ultimately contributed to their failure: Britain was forced to accept Afghanistan’s independence in 1919 at the end of the third Anglo-Afghan war, while the US withdrew its troops in August 2021, putting an end to what proved to be an unwinnable war. The article’s main body examines the British and American presence in Afghanistan through the lens of a historical comparison meant to highlight the similarities and differences in their approaches, while the conclusion contains a few lessons the US should learn from Afghanistan that might, ideally, inform its future interventionist strategies. Keywords: Afghanistan, Taliban, United States, Britain, Great Game. "
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The present contribution examines the representation of the city in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, with the aim of uncovering how the urban space is transformed and repurposed in order to uphold the... more
The present contribution examines the representation of the city in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, with the aim of uncovering how the urban space is transformed and repurposed in order to uphold the ideological pillars of the theocratic regime described in the book. The urban space depicted in the book, which the reader sees through the eyes of the protagonist and narrator Offred, is built upon the contrasting image of “everything looks the same” versus “everything is fundamentally different.” Inspired by the Puritan colonies of 17th-century New England, the Republic of Gilead, in a manner similar to many reallife totalitarian regimes throughout history, remodels the urban space in such a way as to correspond to its worldview and help maintain its hold on power. The first part of the article examines how this is done in the novel itself (also making brief references to the representation of the city in the 2019 sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, entitled Th...
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The present study aims to investigate the contribution that actor Edward G. Robinson brought to the American film industry, beginning with his iconic role as gangster Little Caesar in Mervyn Le Roy’s 1931 production, and continuing with... more
The present study aims to investigate the contribution that actor Edward G. Robinson brought to the American film industry, beginning with his iconic role as gangster Little Caesar in Mervyn Le Roy’s 1931 production, and continuing with widely-acclaimed parts in classic film noirs such as Double Indemnity, The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street. Edward G. Robinson was actually a Romanian Jew, born Emmanuel Goldenberg in Bucharest, in 1893, a relatively little known fact nowadays. By examining his biography, filmography and his best-known, most successful films (mentioned above), I show that Edward G. Robinson was one of classical Hollywood’s most influential actors; for instance, traits of his portrayal of Little Caesar (one of the very first American gangster films) can be found in almost all subsequent cinematic gangster figures, from Scarface to Vito Corleone. In the same vein, the doomed noir characters he played in Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street are...
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... STUDIA EUROPAEA, LIV, 2, 2009 A TALE OF TWO CLINTONS: MEDIA BIAS IN THE COVERAGE OF HILLARY ... Under these unprecedented circumstances, it became evident that the press played a major role in providing the ... But, as it happens,... more
... STUDIA EUROPAEA, LIV, 2, 2009 A TALE OF TWO CLINTONS: MEDIA BIAS IN THE COVERAGE OF HILLARY ... Under these unprecedented circumstances, it became evident that the press played a major role in providing the ... But, as it happens, media is never free of bias. ...
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The present study is an ideography applied to the work and intellectual activity of the Romanian-born Jewish scholar Leon Volovici. A careful analysis of his writings reveals a series of essential directions - landmarks and recurrent... more
The present study is an ideography applied to the work and intellectual activity of the Romanian-born Jewish scholar Leon Volovici. A careful analysis of his writings reveals a series of essential directions - landmarks and recurrent themes of his work - that Volovici himself followed without hesitation throughout his intellectual becoming. Succinctly, the case of Leon Volovici represents a remarkable model of practicing cultural dialogue and achieving intellectual histories from several perspectives. In addition to brief introductory considerations and concluding remarks, this study focuses upon the following dimensions of his writings: i) the role of intellectual dialogue and the meaning of dialogic culture in Volovici's view; ii) the systematic presentation of the dimensions of Romanian antisemitism in the period between 1850 and 1940; iii) the presentation of the historical and sociological dimensions of the idea of writer in Romanian culture and iv) the remembrance of Volovici's identity in the context of his wanderings through distinct geographic spaces. Our conclusion is that all these dimensions are coherent with one another, making up the general image of Leon Volovici's work.
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The present study revisits one of American television’s most famous and influential shows,