September - December 2017
e-mail: ciobanm@plattsburgh.edu
Monica Ciobanu is a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at State University of New York in Plattsburgh where she teaches Political Sociology, Human Rights, Law and Society, and Transitional Justice. Her research is focused on issues of democratization, memory and justice in post-communism with a focus on Romania. Her worked appeared in Europe--Asia Studies, Nationalities Papers, Comparative Sociology, and Problems of Post-Communism. She is currently working on a manuscript focused on Repression, Resistance and Collaboration in Stalinist Romania (1944-1964): Post-Communist Remembering. Dr. Ciobanu holds a PhD in Sociology from the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the New School for Social Research (2005). In 2015 she was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching Scholarship and Creative Activity by SUNY Plattsburgh.
My research project - Repressions, Resistance and Collaboration in Stalinist Romania (1944-1964): Post-Communist Remembering - examines how the processes of remembering Stalinist repression in Romania has shifted from memories of lived and witnessed experiences to more formal representations of the past. It shows how the broad gulag-style repression of early communism during the late 1940's until 1964 when the last political prisoners were released, has become an integral element of national victimization. In fact, quite old themes that had dominated 1980's official nationalist-communist propaganda during Nicolae Ceauşescu's dictatorship - including ethnic nationalism, national victimization and suffering at the hands of foreign occupiers, as well as the myth of an exceptional historical destiny - have resurfaced. This analysis of remembering and its emphasis on various individual, social, and political processes shaping the remaking of historical experience within the confines of a variable collective memory is highly important for understanding the relationship between political culture, social and collective identities and memory itself.
Monica Ciobanu ,"Remembering the Romanian Anti-Communist Armed Resistance: an Analysis of Localized Lived Experience", Eurostudia (journal published by the Center for German and European Studies at the University of Montreal), 10, no.2 (2015): 105-123.
Monica Ciobanu, "Piteşti: A Project in Re-education and its Post-1989 Interpretation in Romania", Nationalities Papers, 43, no. 4 (2015): 615-633.
Monica Ciobanu, "Post-Communist Transitional Justice at 25: Unresolved Dilemmas", Annals of the University of Bucharest-Political Science Series, XVI, no. 2, (2014): 119-136.
Monica Ciobanu, "Reconstructing the History of Early Communism and Armed Resistance in Romania", Europe-Asia Studies, 66, no. 9 (2014): 1452-1481.
Monica Ciobanu, "Recent Restorative Justice Measures in Romania (2006-2010)", Problems of Post-Communism, 60, no.5 (2013): 45-57.
Monica Ciobanu, "Rewriting and Remembering Romanian Communism: Some Controversial Issues", Nationalities Papers, 39, no. 3 (2011): 205-221.
Monica Ciobanu, "Communist Regimes, Legitimacy and the Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe", Nationalities Papers, 38, no. 1 (2010): 3-21.
Monica Ciobanu, "Reconstructing the Role of the Working Class in Communist and Postcommunist Romania", International Journal of Politics Culture and Society, 22, no. 3 (2009):. 315-333.
Monica Ciobanu, "Criminalizing the Past and Reconstructing Collective Memory: The Romanian Truth Commission", Europe-Asia Studies, 61, no. 2 (2009): 315-338.
Monica Ciobanu, "The End of the Democratic Transition? Analyzing the Quality of Democracy Model in Post-Communism", Comparative Sociology, 8, no 1 (2009): 1-38 (reprinted in Rule of Law and Democracy: Inquiries into Internal and External Issues, edited by Leonardo Morlino and Gianluigi Palombella, Netherlands: Brill, 2010).
Monica Ciobanu "Teaching History and Building a Democratic Future: Reflections from Post-Communist Romania", Democracy & Education, 17, no. 3 (2008): 58-62
Monica Ciobanu, "Romania's Travails with Democracy and Accession into the European Union", Europe-Asia Studies, 59, no. 8 (2017): 1429-1450.
Monica Ciobanu, "2004 Romanian Elections: A Test for Democratic Consolidation?" (with Michael Shafir), RFE/RL East European Perspectives, Vol. 7, no. 3 (2005) (16 pp).
Monica Ciobanu, Problems of Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe", RFE/RL East European Perspectives, 5, nos. 16 and17 (2003) (15 pp).
Monica Ciobanu, "Remembering the Gulag: Religious Practices and Representations," in Justice, Memory, and Redress in Romania: New Insights, edited by Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2017), 214-217.
Monica Ciobanu "Conclusion: Post-Communist Romania at 25 and Hopes for the Future" in Post-Communist Romania at 25: Linking Past, Present and Future, edited by Lavinia Stan and Diane Vancea, (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. 2015): 259-270.
Monica Ciobanu, "The Challenge of Competing Pasts", in Post-Communist Transitional Justice: 25 Years of Experience, edited by Lavinia Stan and Nadya Nedelski, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 148-166.
Monica Ciobanu, "Romanian Communism: Reconciliation, Lustration, Memory" (with Cristina Petrescu and Dragoş Petrescu) in School of Memory 2011, edited by Traian Călin Uba, (Bucharest: Civic Academy Foundation, 2012) (in Romanian), 509-552.
Monica Ciobanu, "Women and International Criminal Justice" (with Mangai Natarajan). in International Crime and Justice, edited. by Mangai Natarajan, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 49-56.
Monica Ciobanu, "Commentary on 'Legitimacy, Nation Building and Closure: Meanings and Consequences of the Romanian August of 1968" in The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia. Forty Years Later, edited by Mark Stlolarik, (Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc., 2010), 261-269.
Monica Ciobanu, Interview-essay in The Incredible Adventure of Democracy after Communism, edited by Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu (Iasi: Editura Institutul European, 2010) (in Romanian), 43-61.