Anca Parvulescu

Manuela Boatcă

How are modernity, coloniality, and interimperiality entangled? Bridging the humanities and social sciences, Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă provide innovative decolonial perspectives that aim to creolize modernity and the modern world-system. Historical Transylvania, at the intersection of the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, offers the platform for their multi-level reading of the main themes in Liviu Rebreanu's 1920 novel Ion. Topics range from the question of the region's capitalist integration to antisemitism and the enslavement of Roma to multilingualism, gender relations, and religion. Creolizing the Modern develops a comparative method for engaging with areas of the world that have inherited multiple, conflicting imperial and anti-imperial histories.

Transylvania across Empires

Creolizing the Modern

Parvulescu and Boatca have written an important book, dealing with historically marginalized groups such as Women, Jews, and the Roma. Ultimately though, their book is written at such a high level that it is hard to recommend to people. I had a hard time understanding much of the analysis as I was unfamiliar with many of the terms they used - which they refused to clarify or define throughout the book. Additionally, they referred to other authors without context as though the reader would know immediately who they are, what they’ve written, and what they believe. Ultimately, a good, but difficult read, that offers a lot of interesting and meaningful analysis on Transylvanian history and culture.  

Creolizing the Modern Transylvania across Empires

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