This workshop explores the intersection of tourism, infrastructure and modernity in the southern and eastern Carpathians from the nineteenth century to the present. It brings together scholars whose work engages with questions of modernity in the Carpathians in an interdisciplinary way. The workshop encourages research conversations that approach the Carpathians as a central place for negotiating modernity and take the agency of Carpathian actors seriously. This workshop will thus build on existing scholarship on the (broader) region while moving beyond analyses that further embed divisions of east-west, upland-lowland, development-underdevelopment.

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PROGRAM

9.30 Arrival

09.45–10.00 Introduction
Constantin ARDELEANU (NEC)
James KORANYI (Durham University)
Claudiu OANCEA (NEC)
Andreas WILD (Lapedatu Foundation)

10.00-11.30 Panel I: The Natural Carpathians
(Chair: James KORANYI)

David DIACONU (SNSPA)
The Economic Origins of Today’s Disparities: Lessons Learned from Nineteenth-Century Romanian Villages

Cosmin KOSZOR-CODREA (New Europe College)
Praising the Nation in Nature: A Transnational History of Nature Protection in the Southeastern Carpathians up to the 1940s

Adelina ȘTEFAN (University of Ostrava)
Forging and Consuming Socialist Spaces: East-West Encounters in the Romanian Carpathians from the 1960s until the 1980s

11.30-12.00 Coffee break

12.00-13.30 Panel II: Carpathian Fictions
(Chair: Raluca CERNAHOSCHI)

Enikő DÁCZ (IKGS Munich)
Romanian Rhapsodies in the Carpathians ‒ Tourisms between Myth and Economy Seen through a Literary Lens

Raluca CERNAHOSCHI (Bates College)
Mountain Battlegrounds: Tourism Infrastructure in the Southern Carpathians in Interwar Romanian Fiction

Alexandra Simona COȚOFAN (Zayed University)
Fascisms in the Closet: Thinking with Homoeroticism as a Central Element to Right-Wing Imaginaries

13.30-14.30 Lunch break

14.30–16.00 Panel III: The Everyday Carpathians
(Chair: Constantin ARDELEANU)

Claudiu OANCEA (NEC)
Get Your Rocks Off and Your Backpack On: Socialist Modernization, Rock Music, and Everyday Life at the Foot of the Carpathians – The Case Study of Zărnești

Raluca ALEXANDRESCU (University of Bucharest)
The Spell of Bucegi: Wizards, Fairies, Magical Forests and the Political Narratives on Nature Around 1900

Andreas WILD (Lapedatu Foundation)
Private, Social, and Professional Aspects of Mountaineering in Southern Transylvania in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

16.00-16.30 Coffee break

16.30-18.00 Panel IV: Carpathian Leisure
(Chair: Claudiu OANCEA)

James KORANYI (Durham University)
Guides, Clubs, and Tourists: Rural Modernity in the Southern Carpathians, 1880s-1920s

Catherine ROTH (Université de Haute-Alsace)
The Siebenbürgischer Karpatenverein: Tourism, Infrastructure and Identity from 1880 to 2024

Mioara ANTON (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History)
Holidays in Socialist Romania: The Magazine Romania Pitorească (Colourful Romania) and the Tourism Propaganda

18.00-18.15 Conclusions
Chairs: Constantin ARDELEANU, Andreas WILD, James KORANYI, Claudiu OANCEA

This workshop is organized within the Lapedatu fellowships program at the New Europe College, supported by the Lapedatu Foundation.