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Following the general problematics of reformulating the concepts of “discourse” and “narrative” and treating cinematic products as textual objects, with incursions into the 21st century cinema as a realist-expositional medium of the social problems of the Other, the present paper aims, by contextualizing the film Aferim! (2015) by Radu Jude, to analyze the relationship between language, language and race, racialization, and representation. In short, it aims to analyze the position of linguistic racism in the admitted “realistic” and artistic presentation of the process of marginalization. Such academic analyses have become present internationally, especially with the development of the linguistic dimension of postcolonial studies and the emergence and expansion of the concept of political correctness and/or cultural sensitivity in the contemporary socio-cultural discourse, especially in direct relation to language, language, and visual media of artistic transposition. We must be remembered, however, that Roma people occupy a marginal place even in postcolonial analysis of otherness. In the Romanian space, with a strong intertextual character, Aferim! occupies a privileged place precisely because of the primacy given to the theme: the Roma slavery in the 19th century Wallachia, during the year 1853, which is a key-year, considering that the formal abolition of slavery took place only three years later, in 1856, in Wallachia. Intentionally subversive, Jude takes the historical form of the popular films from the communist period and turns it against itself, while also adding the American-inspired aesthetic of Westerns. The multiplicity of perspectives is present, but the „intimacy” belongs to the white, oppressive characters, putting the viewer in an uncomfortable position that belongs to them historically. Following the results of the quantitative study of the present work, where the most often used word is „cocoane” [lord] in all its declined versions, Aferim! is thus a film about power dynamics, a dynamic in which the Roma are the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Phanariote Century", the period between 1711 / 1716-1821, in which the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were ruled by ethnic Greeks, loyal subjects of the sultan, from the rich Phanar district of Istanbul, was considered a period of decline characterized by the degradation of social life, by the accentuated impoverishment of a predominantly rural population, by the prosperity of the nobility, by the exacerbation of taxation and, last but not least, by the increase of corruption at all institutional levels in the two principalities. This paper is an analysis, based on documentary sources and historiographical studies, of the mechanisms of operation of local and central state institutions to determine the extent to which the facts we associate today with acts of corruption have significantly influenced, in a negative way, the Romanian society of that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to investigate the function of the dog-headed image of Saint Christopher among the Romanian Orthodox representations of the 18th century. The research will address the relationship between the existing zoomorphic representations and a new hagiography created by the popular lore, which circulated in Wallachia after 1700. This legend converted the monstrous ugliness of the hagiographic hero into his voluntary relinquishment of physical beauty, a semantic change intended to stress Saint Christopher's virtue. The article will focus on the role of this unusual visual representation within the religious edifice, as well as on the saint's exemplarity which operates in triggering the contemplation of Christian virtues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the three-lobed churches, the most representative creations of the ecclesiastic and monumental architecture preserved in the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic area. Beginning with the fourteenth century, in Moldavia and Wallachia, the old wooden churches, often threatened by the fire, were replaced with stone or brick masonry ones. Unfortunately, strong and enduring earthquakes occur in this area. The stone and brick masonry, with clay or lime mortars, used for three-lobed churches, including their foundations and steeples, were often severely damaged by earthquakes. According to a legend, in the case of the Church of Arges Monastery, usually the damages occurred during the nights. To save the church, by the virtue of an old myth, the Manole Master has immolated his wife into one of the pronaos walls. By that occasion, the whole pronaos was enlarged and the church was no longer damaged. The later research has shown that by reshaping the pronaos, the relative positions of the weight center and the stiffness center have been reversed. Since then, that beautiful church, during its long service of 503 years, was never damaged again by earthquakes. The same happy fate has been experienced by the subsequent three-lobed churches which adopted the same enlarged pronaos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper is a brief study into the mechanism of surveillance techniques that complemented the ones used in the course of the production and circulation of the book, in a geopolitical space affected by the historical reality and experience of the proximity between Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire (mid-nineteenth century and second half of the 19th century). The analysis of this phenomenon concentrates on the dynamics of the process concerning the relationship generated by the actions of authorities for normalizing social and cultural behaviors on one side, and the reaction of those directly targeted, on the other side. The modernization of South-Eastern European societies has influenced the diversification of the surveillance system as a form of resistance and/or adaptation to the new realities. Therefore, authorities started to focus on new targets: checking letters, repertoire and content of plays (Wallachia, the Ottoman Empire), labels, textbooks, etc. The forms of institutional control that grow between censors and censored outline a reactive dimension of the complex mechanisms established between “the world of writing” and the one of power. These two groups become over time the projection of actions through which those who control and those controlled will adapt their strategies of integration, acceptance or rejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research constitutes a historical and micro-demographic approach to the subject of marriage and family. Despite the expected uniformity of many social behaviors or demographic patterns characteristic of a preindustrial society as the one studied here, the Romanian and Roma communities under scrutiny appear to still have been marked by important differences in terms of urban/rural residence, employment, residential status, social status, freedom or lack thereof, differences that had the potential to influence close ties between individuals. Social stratification in urban Wallachia offers the best examples of how domestic service, employment, and slavery can be framed from the point of view of family and private life. Even so, since the field of micro-demographics is relatively new in Romanian historiography, the goals of this paper are not centered on a particular research question. Instead, they are largely exploratory and overlap with those of my unpublished doctoral thesis. I did, however, incorporate the aforementioned contextual elements into the analysis, but as pathways of interpretation, and not starting points of discussion. I used nineteenth-century population lists to glean as much as I could on marriage, widowhood, the presence of children, and overall belonging to a nuclear family. Next, I translated the data thus gleaned into different indicators, which I then applied in analyzing different population groups, with a focus on Romanians and Roma. The sources I used are the first two general modern censuses in Romanian history, which were conducted in 1838 in Wallachia and 1859 in Moldavia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the passing away of one of the most important representatives of the last generation of Byzantine scholars, Dionisie Fotino (1777-1821). In the permanent exhibition of the Special Collections Department of the Argeș County Library there are two works belonging to Dionisie Fotino. The first is a 203-year-old code of laws; printed on watermark paper, in Romanian with Cyrillic characters, the book is bound in green leather, printed with double border and gilded floral motifs. The special attraction brought to attention is the illustration on the back of the title page that shows the coat of arms of Wallachia (9 x 9 cm), surrounded by the coats of arms of the counties, but also the accompanying note. The second work "The general history of Dacia and Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldova", in three volumes, presents, in a concentrated way, the history of these lands from the founding of Dacia to the beginning of the 19th century. The value of this work lies in the illustration on the cover page, which shows the Russian bicephalous eagle holding the two coats of arms: the coat of arms of Wallachia and the coat of arms of Moldova, all protected by divine power, as well as the ex-libris - stamp of the Phanariot prince Ioan Constantin Caradja, written in black ink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to bring to mind the personality of Antim Ivireanul and his involvement in the development of the Romanian culture. Its activity within the Church is evoked, as abbot of the Snagov Monastery, as bishop of Râmnic and as founder of churches: building of All Saints Monastery in Bucharest (1713-1715), later called the Antim Monastery for which he established a set of rules for proper functioning, the Antim Monastery Establishment representing the oldest regulation for organization and functioning of a holy place. Within the monastery, there was a school where children were taught for four years Romanian and Slavonic, two printers - Romanian and Greek and a library, the first public library in Wallachia for which Antim establishes loan rules. Also, throughout his life, Antim Ivireanul has printed 63 books, of which 21 in Romanian, four being written by him. In all his writings, Antim preaches the introduction of the Romanian language in the church by printing religious service books in Romanian and contributing to the creation of a Romanian liturgical language that continues to this day. His most important work, Didahiile, is a collection of sermons held on important holidays and Sundays over the year, written in a beautiful and cursive Romanian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author present the rivalry of the mouths of Danube market and the south Russian hinterland. The Russo-Turkish treaty of Adrianople (1829) marked the beginnings of a new era in the history of the Romanians, opening significant perspectives of political, institutional or national development, although Russia's status as protector of Wallachia and Moldavia overshadowed these prospects. The Danube River was the most appropriate artery for connect the Romanian market with central Europe, Black Sea and the Mediterranean markets. The Sulina channel was still the only way of access of commercial ships to and from the Danubian ports. Two cities, Galati in Moldavia and Braila in Wallachia, personify the interests and hopes of the principalities regarding the Danube. These ports are the result of the Romanian and British economic policies of this era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plague epidemics of 1718-19 greatly affected the foreign trade of the Romanian Principalities, and also the international trade in Central and Eastern Europe, leading to a complete interruption of commercial exchanges following the closing of the borders of Imperial Hungary and given the uncertainty of the routes in the areas affected by pestilence. On the basis of a critical analysis of the correspondence between the Venetian ambassador to Vienna and the Provveditori e Sopraprovveditori alla Sanità of the Serenissima, this paper presents the impact of the bubonic plague on the foreign trade of the Romanian Principalities, especially in what concerns the commercial relations between Transylvania, Wallachia and Venice. These unpublished Venetian sources refer to the position of the Romanian Principalities at the periphery of world economy, after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty of Passarowitz (Požarevac), which led to the annexation of Little Wallachia by the Habsburgs, thus causing a reduction in Wallachian exports and the rise of a new competitor-- the Habsburg Empire--in the commerce with the Ottoman Levant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]