The Romanian Cultural Space in the American Context: An Interview with Dr. Ileana Marin
Ileana Marin (born in 1969) is a native of Constanţa, Romania. She is a graduate of the University of Bucharest, the Faculty of Letters (BA, 1991; PhD, 2000) and the University of Washington in Seattle (PhD in comparative literature, 2011). She works at the Ovidius University in Constanţa as a Teaching Assistant (1997–2003) and an Assistant Professor (2003–2011), then as an English teacher at the Seattle Pacific University (2014–2015) and a Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle (from 2012 to present). She is a Fulbright scholar (2004). Since 2005 she has continued her studies in the United States, and in 2010 she settles down in Seattle, Washington.
Ileana Marin’s areas of expertise are comparative literature, textual studies, multiculturalism and post-communist societies. She has authored five books of literature, arts and aesthetics. She is a co-founder and the President of the non-profit American-Romanian Cultural Society (ARCS) association (2013).
Ileana Marin has been living and working as a Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
I had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Ileana Marin on November 16, 2018, at the Romanian Embassy in Washington, DC, during a gala-symposium on issues of politics, security, management and culture, an event sponsored by the ALIANȚA (The Alliance — The Friends of the Romanian-American Alliance) Foundation.
On that occasion, Mrs. Ileana Marin was kind enough to give me a brief interview.
1. Dr. Ileana Marin, you are a specialist in comparative literature and textual studies at the Washington University in Seattle. What place does the Romanian language occupy in this context?
Ever since I have started teaching at the University of Washington, and I have started with comparative literature classes, I have integrated, I have tried to integrate in each one a text, a reference, a film, a reference to a Romanian artist because, in fact, Romanian culture has produced geniuses such as Brâncuşi, Tristan Tzara, Victor Brauner, Fundoianu, Cioran, Eliade, who must be known in a much wider international context, all the more so as there is interest in the American academia. However, having access to these valuable works through translation, as, indeed, all these authors enjoy translations, even very good ones, is different from the immediate access to the original text. My desire is to be able to provide access, even slightly limited, to the text in Romanian and, in particular, to the Romanian language, in general.
2. Thank you. In 2012 you initiated the foundation of the Romanian studies at the university. You are also one of the initiators of the non-profit organization American-Romanian Cultural Society (ARCS). What programs have you run in the past and what agenda do you have in the future? In short.
Yes, in 2012 we organized an event to raise funds for the purpose of opening this, in fact, account, it’s an account under the aegis of the University of Washington, which is called the Romanian Studies Fund, in which people, either from the Romanian community or Americans who are In love with Eastern Europe and even Romania, can contribute by donating funds directly to the university in Seattle. With this fund this year we are subsidizing the course “One Hundred Years of Cultural Transformations: Romanian Literature, Art and Film” at the University of Washington. Without this fund this course will not have taken place. We already have twelve students enrolled, there is still room for the twenty-five seats that we have planned for. So, in this way, the Romanian cultural voice will be heard in the academic space of the University of Washington, which, it must be said, is one of the prominent American universities, the 13th place in the USA.
3. Very beautiful. One last question. In your opinion, what are the best practices in teaching Romanian in schools?
It depends on the audience and the cultural space in which the school is located. Our experience, Otilia Baraboi’s and mine, as foreign language instructors in other cultural spaces, is that each cultural space has an expectation horizon that must be fulfilled, both by method and the content of texts, of the ways in which it is taught. That is why we are extremely attentive to the reactions of our high school and university students, and try to create a comprehensive method, as I mentioned today in my presentation, the integrative method in which, you have seen, grammar does not have a place. Grammar is taught interactively, it is taught through projects, it is taught through activities, not through boring drills or memorization exercises. As long as the language is not taught in a living context, a putting into context, the language cannot be learned in an alert manner by university students or high school students.
4. Thank you very much for this interview.
With pleasure.
NOTE — Versions of the article were published in:
AMERICAN THINKER (El Cerrito/San Francisco, California) [+ comments]
***
and
CARIBBEAN NEWS GLOBAL (Brooklyn/New York City, New York) [ comments]
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and
CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW! (Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas) [ comments]
***
and
CONSERVATIVE READ (Scottsdale/Phoenix, Arizona) [ comments]
***
and
INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATIVE (Phoenix, Arizona) [4 comments]
and
MARIANAS VARIETY (Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands) [ comments]
and
MEDIUM (San Francisco, California) [100+ views; 4 comments; 50+ likes]
and
SAIPAN TRIBUNE (Garapan/Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands) [ comments]
***
and featured in:
320ro.com (Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom) [ comments]
***
and
ACCENT (Toronto, Canada) [in Romanian] [ comments]
***
and
ACTIVE BOARD
***
and
AFRO-CONSCIOUS MEDIA (Canada; Long Beach, California) [ comments]
***
and
ALTERNATIVA/THE ALTERNATIVE (Toronto, Canada) (_________ 2018) [in Romanian] [NOTE = scroll down on the journal’s home page to get the article and then press OPEN on the article]
***
and
ARMONIA/THE HARMONY (Hickory/Charlotte, North Carolina) [in Romanian] [ comments]
and also
ARMONIA MAGAZINE/THE HARMONY MAGAZINE (Hickory/Charlotte, North Carolina) [in Romanian] [ comments]
***
and
BLUNT FORCE TRUTH (Detroit, Michigan) [ comments]
***
and
BURNING PLATFORM [ comments]
***
and
CARIBBEAN POST (Santiago, Dominican Republic) [ comments]
***
and
CLICK ROMANIA (London, United Kingdom) [in Romanian] [4 comments]
and
CURENTUL INTERNAŢIONAL/INTERNATIONAL CURRENT (Sterling Heights/Detroit, Michigan) [in Romanian] [4 comments]
and
FIWEH (Okinawa, Japan) [ comments]
***
and
FREE REPUBLIC (Fresno, California) [ comments]
***
and
GÂNDACUL DE COLORADO/THE COLORADO BEETLE (Estes Park/Denver, Colorado) [in Romanian] [100+ views; 4 comments]
and
GOP BRIEFING ROOM [ + views; comments]
***
and
LUCIANNE.COM (Cliffside Park, New Jersey) [ + comments]
***
and
LUMEA ROMÂNEASCĂ/THE ROMANIAN WORLD (Grand Rapids, Michigan) [in Romanian]
***
and
MENAFN (Amman, Jordan)
***
and
MERIDIANUL ROMÂNESC/THE ROMANIAN MERIDIAN (Santa Clarita/Los Angeles, California) [in Romanian]
***
and
MEXICAN OCCUPATION
***
and
MIORIŢA USA (Sacramento, California) [in Romanian]
***
and
MORNING IN ARIZONA [ comments]
***
and
NAŢIUNEA/THE NATION (Bucharest, Romania) [in Romanian] [ comments]
***
and
NEW YORK MAGAZIN/NEW YORK MAGAZINE (New York City, New York) [in Romanian] [ comments]
and
OBSERVATORUL/THE OBSERVER (Toronto, Canada) [in Romanian]
***
and
OCCIDENTUL ROMÂNESC/ROMANIAN WEST (Madrid, Spain)
***
and
PARADIGMS AND DEMOGRAPHICS (Cleveland, Ohio) [ comments]
***
and
PROTECTORS OF LIBERTY (Mount Pleasant, Michigan) [ comments]
***
and
QOSHE (Netherlands & Turkey)
***
and
QWIKET (Kingston, New York) [ comments]
***
and
ROMANIAN TIMES (Portland, Oregon) [in Romanian]
and also
ROMANIAN TIMES (Portland, Oregon) (print edition, p. 15) [in Romanian]
and
SAVE AMERICA FOUNDATION (Clearwater, Florida)
***
and
TIMP ROMÂNESC/ROMANIAN TIME (Bucharest, Romania) [in Romanian] [ comments]
***
and
TRIBUNA ROMÂNEASCĂ/ROMANIAN TRIBUNE (Chicago, Illinois) [in Romanian] [ comments]
***
and
TRULY TIMES [ + views, comments]
***
and
TRUMP’S MINUTEMEN (Fort Worth, Texas)
***
and
US POLITICS 10z [ comments]
***
and referenced in:
CENTRUL DE PRESĂ — PRESSPEDIA/THE PRESS CENTER — PRESSPEDIA (Bucharest, Romania) [in Romanian] [+ views]
***
and
CURENTUL INTERNAŢIONAL/INTERNATIONAL CURRENT — FACEBOOK (Sterling Heights/Detroit, Michigan) [in Romanian]
and
LIBERAL FORUM
***
and
MUCK RACK (New York, New York)
***
and
OBAMA LIES
***
and
PRESS RUSH (Turku, Finland)
***
and
ZENITH NEWS (Duluth, Minnesota)
***
NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS = 11
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