Constantin Ovidiu Verdeş, born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1963. Ph.D. from University of Bucharest. Professor of Literary Theory at University of Bucharest.
Mellon Fellow (1 September 2012 – 31 January 2013)
COUNTER-STORIES: EXILE AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN THE CONTEMPORARY WRITINGS OF ROMANIAN DIASPORA AUTHORS
My research project focuses on the relationship between the topic of “exile” and the genre of autobiography in the writings of contemporary (post-communist) Romanian diaspora authors. Thanks to the excellent quality of seminars, intellectual exchanges and library facilities offered by NIAS, to a rigorous and yet flexible organization of the entire activity, the five-months Mellon Fellowship I was awarded in Wassenaar have been extremely beneficial under at least two aspects. Firstly, I gained a much-needed interdisciplinary theoretical background for a future book I intend to write. Secondly, by investigating different traditions of exiled writers (post-national-socialist, post-colonial), I could contextualize my object in a broader comparative framework. Thus, the previous literary investigation of a single national context has gained a more solid historical and inter-cultural basis.