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The complex relationship between human societies and the environment has become a thriving field of research over the past three decades. The contribution of human osteoarchaeology to exploring this relationship, however, has been rather limited. Two unpublished late medieval skeletal assemblages unearthed in the historical centres of Bucharest and Braşov (located in southern and north-central Romania respectively) seemed ideal choices for investigating the impact of substantial climatic and environmental changes that took place worldwide between the 14th and the 18th century AD. As witnessed by medieval artistic and documentary sources, this unsettled climate was mirrored by human populations with social and political instability, epidemics, famine, but also through the rise of new cultural movements. The analysis of over 600 individuals (a minimum number of 421 individuals from Bucharest and 206 from Braşov) was carried out to: 1) Provide a thorough osteological analysis, and compare and test statistically the collected data to reconstruct demographic and pathological patterning; 2) Identify ‘skeletal environmental markers’, i.e. possible indicators of the effect of climatic shifts on the human body; 3) Cross-reference osteological, archaeological, historical and climatological data in order to present a robust biocultural assessment of the impact of environmental and historical events on the Romanian population during the Middle Ages. The identification of low life-expectancy, higher mortality rates for children and young adults and general high morbidity levels were in line with other studies on medieval populations. However, evidence for a high prevalence of specific physiological and psychological stress markers was observed in these two geographically, culturally and economically different urban communities. As a strong mortality- and morbidity-shaping factor, the detrimental effect of climate anomalies is one of the main explanations for such findings, and is supported by medieval historical sources and recent advances in Romanian climatological studies. Despite some limitations (i.e. incomplete chronological information for most of the burial contexts, minimal local historical sources, lack of funding for isotopic analyses, and time constraints), the results of the present study have offered a new perspective on the relationship between Romanian medieval populations and their living environment, and have shown the enormous potential of interdisciplinary bioarchaeological research in Romania.

This thesis aims to analyze the Black Sea environmental regime, which consists of three main parts. The first part of the study, after a general introduction to the environmental aspect of international politics, puts forward the regime formation in the field of environment and the development of global and regional environmental policy and law for the protection of coastal and marine environments. The second part firstly describes the peculiar characteristics and the environmental problems of the Black Sea. Secondly, it analyzes the disintegrative and integrative motives behind the establishment of the regime. Lastly, the legal, institutional and financial framework of the regime together with the role of international donors in the Region are put forward. The third part identifies the challenges affecting the functioning of the regime as well as the opportunities for the future of the Black Sea. The main concern of this study is to have an insight of the Black Sea environmental regime to see whether the regime has been functioning sustainably to enable the protection of the Black Sea and the recovery of its ecosystem.

Die Oper stand schon immer im Zentrum des Interesses des rumänischen Publikums. Keine andere Musikgattung verstand es, in einem so hohen Maße das Interesse des Publikums zu gewinnen. Die Optionen gegenüber der Oper wirkten wie Magnetfelder und wurden von den zahlreichen Musikmelomanen affektiv wahrgenommen, die beliebtesten Melodien der Arien und Chöre konnte man selbst auf den Straßen wahrnehmen. Keine andere Musiksparte beanspruchte in den Tageszeitungen und Zeitschriften so viel Raum wie das Musiktheater und die rumänische Oper.

Yes

Die Oper stand schon immer im Zentrum des Interesses des rumänischen Publikums. Keine andere Musikgattung verstand es, in einem so hohen Maße das Interesse des Publikums zu gewinnen. Die Optionen gegenüber der Oper wirkten wie Magnetfelder und wurden von den zahlreichen Musikmelomanen affektiv wahrgenommen, die beliebtesten Melodien der Arien und Chöre konnte man selbst auf den Straßen wahrnehmen. Keine andere Musiksparte beanspruchte in den Tageszeitungen und Zeitschriften so viel Raum wie das Musiktheater und die rumänische Oper.

Through the creation of a graphic novel based on a Romanian Holocaust survivor’s testimony, this study attempts to clarify the role of artistic creation in meaning-making during Holocaust and genocide education. In facilitating empathy and moral education, the creative process encourages a deeper exploration of these troubling topics than is possible within the confines of a traditional academic approach. In order to understand this process, I worked with the testimony of Zoly Zamir, who escaped Bucharest following the Iron Guard Rebellion of 1941. The creation of the graphic novel took me from Austin to Houston and Romania, where I sought to trace the echoes of history in architecture and environment. Translating Zamir’s story into word and image produced an empathetic bond to the narrative and the region, facilitating a deeper understanding of the hows and whys of the Holocaust. That engagement spurred a desire to continue to ask questions, to look beyond a regimented understanding and view the broader implications of the history. / text

La volonté d’inscrire l’apologie monumentale que représente le Centre civique de Bucarest dans une histoire urbaine et sociale nous a poussé à analyser les raisons qui ont guidé sa mise en œuvre et, plus largement, à reconstruire le fil narratif de l’histoire bucarestoise à travers l’héritage bâti prestigieux de la ville. C’est ainsi que nous nous sommes intéressés aux rapports entre édification des bâtiments et espaces remarquables et (re)construction d’une identité nationale roumaine, depuis de la déclaration d’indépendance jusqu’à l’intégration européenne perçue comme reconnaissance suprême de l’État roumain. Ce travail analyse donc les techniques d’instrumentalisation de la production architecturale et urbaine dans la définition et la promotion de l’identité nationale. Il complète également le peu d’études scientifiques traitant du Centre civique, à la fois emblème et stigmate en raison des efforts exceptionnels octroyés pour sa construction. Enfin, il aborde la question de la réception d’un ensemble « idéologiquement chargé » et, plus largement, les divers emplois faits des héritages urbains par les régimes politiques qui se sont succédés à la tête de la Roumanie. / This paper aims to place the monumental apology represented by the Civic Center of Bucharest in its urban and socio-political context. Therefore we have analysed the reasons and decisions that led to the way it was conceived and set up, and in addition we have tried to rebuild the narrative of the history of Bucharest through the city’s prominent built heritage. For this reason we have looked into the relations between the fact of erecting buildings and remarkable spaces and the (re)construction of a Romanian national identity, beginning with the Declaration of independence and ending with the European integration, the latter standing for the supreme legitimacy granted to the Romanian State. Therefore this research engages into the analysis of the mechanisms involved in using architectural and urban productions as instruments for defining and promoting national identity. In addition it fills a gap of almost non-existent scientific work dealing with the Civic Center, which is, due to the exceptional efforts engaged in its construction, in the same time Bucharest’s emblem and scar. Finally, it deals with the question of the reception of “ideologically charged” buildings, and more generally, with the fate of urban heritage inherited from totalitarian regimes.

My research on Victor Brauner’s work in the first two decades of his affiliation with the Surrealist group in Paris re-establishes the role played by the Romanian Jewish artist in the definition of automatic Surrealist procedures of painting and mixed-technique objects that relied upon a new and unconventional understanding of the occult. In the three chapters of this study of Victor Brauner’s work in the 1930s and early 1940s, I analyse key notions, such as the fantastic, animal magnetism, and the occult practices of art making in a Surrealist context. The fantastic is discussed in the first chapter of the thesis from a literary perspective with political connotations in Surrealism, which resulted from a debate engaged in nineteenth-century French literature on the issue of the marvellous versus the fantastic. Due to the Surrealists’ interest in the fantastic a new category emerged, the fantastic art, which is examined in this first chapter in connection with Brauner’s artworks in the 1930s. The incursion into the fantastic, with focus on the premonition of the painter’s left eye loss in his artworks of the 1930s is completed with an approach to spiritualism that had a revival at the time. The second chapter of the thesis investigates the doctrine of animal magnetism and the state of magnetic somnambulism in eighteenth-century scholarship and shows how this experimentation had influenced the development of a new branch of the science, metapsychics or psychical research at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth one. I take into account and demonstrate that these outdated and modern domains of enquiry into the unknown and beyond reality were appealing to Surrealists, in particular to Brauner, due to their research into unconscious processes of the mind. I argue that through the attainment of a condition similar to the one of the somnambulist in sessions of magnetic sleep, the Surrealists aimed to generate automatic procedures of painting and object making. In the third chapter of the thesis I discuss Victor Brauner’s technique of drawing with a candle, or le cirage, as an automatic procedure of art developed in connection with the occult. This final part of the thesis makes also manifest the association of Brauner’s artworks in the early 1940s with practices of the occult in the near and centuries before past.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Boston University PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of this thesis is to closely analyze some of the individual authorial voices that have emerged from contemporary Romanian cinema. Billed by the international critical establishment as a "New Wave," the recent slate of Romanian productions, while very successful on the international festival circuit, still lacks an apt conceptualization of the precise characteristics that set these new filmmakers apart, not only from other international directors, but also from one another. The analysis focuses on six recent productions: Stuffand Dough (2001), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) and Aurora (2010) by Cristi Puiu, 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) and Police, Adjective (2010) by Corneliu Porumboiu, and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010) by Andrei Ujica, breaking down the individual authorial characteristics and thematic and stylistic concerns of each filmmaker and contextualizing them within the larger history of Romanian film, as well as the trajectories of international art cinema.