Irina Livezeanu

Irina Livezeanu is a Romanian-American historian. Her research interests include Eastern Europe, Eastern European Jewry, intellectuals and politics, regionalism, and the avant-agarde in Romania and Europe. Several of her publications deal with the history of Romania, Moldova, and Bessarabia. She is Emeritus Faculty in the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2010–2013 she served as president of the Society for Romanian Studies.

Biography Livezeanu was born in Bucharest, and emigrated to the United States at the age of 12. She received a B.A. in Ancient Greek from Swarthmore College (1974), and a M.A. (1979) and a Ph.D. (1986) from the University of Michigan. The volume deals with the creation of Greater Romania during the final years of World War I and its interwar history.

Livezeanu was a senior fellow at the New York University Erich Maria Remarque Institute, a European Studies Fellow at the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center, and a Senior Fellow Collegium Budapest – Institute of Advanced Study.

Views and contributions In analyzing nationalist successes in early 20th century Romania (Cultural Politics in Greater Romania), Irina Livezeanu challenges the theories of British-Czech social anthropologist Ernest Gellner, specifically his definition of nationalism as a product of industrial society. According to historian Constantin Iordachi, this pro-Romanianization stand was equivalent to "a Kulturkampf", and often meant "sacrificing democratic and pluralistic values on the altar of historically-motivated nationalism."

At a conference hosted by the Romanian Cultural Institute in 2007, Livezeanu spoke against what she called "historic and historiographic autarky" in contemporary Romanian culture, arguing that it was a still-surviving consequence of censorship imposed by the Romanian communist regime. She proposed that the reemergence of nationalist themes in writing history after the Revolution of 1989 was owed to the ongoing influence of various "nationalist-communist" ideologues, as well as to the prominence of nationalist thinkers during the interwar period, but she argued that the phenomenon was on the decline, and that younger Romanian historians would be able to relate to such topics "as mere researchers". She argued that, given the moment, "I believe that any study which would question and deconstruct rather than defend, excuse or accuse various institutions [...] is worth the effort."

The 2000 Cornell paperback edition of the Cultural Politics in Greater Romania is substantially revised and corrected edition of the book.

Works Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930, Cornell University Press, 1995 and 2000. with June Pachuta Farris, Eds.: Women & Gender in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Volume I Southeastern and East Central Europe, M.E. Sharpe (Routledge), 2007. Cultură şi naţionalism în România Mare, 1918-1930, Humanitas, 1998. with Arpad von Klimo, eds.: The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700 2017

Book Series Editor https://srstudies.org/book-series/ Studii Româneşti/Romanian Studies/Études Roumaines/Rumänische Studien for the Society for Romanian Studies & Polirom Publishing House, Iaşi, Romania