- Date
- Thursday 15 Jun 2023, 14:00 - 16:00
- Type
- General
- Spoken Language
- English
- Room
- T3-11
- Building
- Mandeville Building
- Location
- Campus Woudestein
You are cordially invited to attend the Center for Historical Culture research meeting on the topic of " Examining hegemonic historical culture as a mechanism of racialisation: an inquiry into state education in post-1989 Romania" with guest speaker Simina Dragoș, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. The meeting will be held on June 15th from 14-16h at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Campus Woudestein, Mandeville building, room T3-11. We look forward to an engaging and enlightening discussion on this topic.
Abstract
This presentation outlines the main theoretical underpinnings of my PhD, which explores the post-1989 historical culture (cf Grever & Adriaansen, 2017) of Romania, as reflected in state education, film and public sites of remembrance. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s (1996) interpretation of Gramsci, Simina sees schools as places where consensus is assured through the pedagogies of the state (see Sriprakash et al., 2022). She is especially interested in the role of culture - particularly historical culture - in the maintenance of hegemony. Simina argues that, in the case of Romania, narrow and exclusive definitions of ‘Romanianness’ are hegemonic and participate in the larger, global hegemony of whiteness. Although she seeks to dissect the cultural processes which underpin hegemony, she also looks to expand the notion of ‘historical culture’ to include counter-memory and mnemonic resistance to hegemony. Overall, Simina aims to show how the concept of historical culture can enable an understanding of the ways in which hegemonic culture, as promoted in schools through the pedagogies of the state, leads to racialisation. The presentation will illustrate this constellation of concepts through empirical examples from her PhD work.
About Simina
Simina Dragoș is a PhD student at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Her research and political interests revolve around anti-Roma racism and (youth) activism in her home-country, Romania, but also in (Eastern) Europe more broadly. She seeks to engage with decolonial theoretical and methodological perspectives in her work, thinking about imperial and colonial influences in the Eastern European periphery.