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Monica Popescu

Monica Popescu
Group: 
Faculty Members
Position: 
Professor, William Dawson Scholar of African Literatures
Stream: 
Literature
Cultural Studies
Specialization by geographical area: 
Africa
Specialization by time period: 
20th-Century
Contemporary
Area(s): 
Archives & Bibliography
Critical Theory
Fiction
History & Theory of the Novel
Identity & Representation
Post/Anti/Decolonial Studies
Degree(s): 

Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania)
M.A. (Windsor)
B.A., M.A. (Bucharest)

Selected publications: 

Books

(Duke University Press, 2020)

  • Winner of the Book of the Year Award-Scholarship (African Literature Association); Honourable Mention, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies (Modern Language Association); CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
  • Listen to on At Penpoint

Book cover of "At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War" by Monica Popescu

(Palgrave, 2010)

  • Winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities

Book cover of South African Literature Beyond the Cold War", by Monica Popescu

The Politics of Violence in Post-Communist Films(Concordia, 1999)

Book cover of "The Politics of Violence in Post-Communist Films", by Monica Popescu

Edited Volumes

Book Series co-editor for the , with Katherine Zien and Sandeep Banerjee

. Co-editor (with Kerry Bystrom and Katherine Zien), 2020.

Book cover of "The Cultural Cold War and The Global South", eds. Kerry Bystrom, Monica Popescu and Katherine Zien

African Literary History and the Cold War. Special issue of Research in African Literatures. Co-editor (with Bhakti Shringarpure). 50.3 (Fall 2019).

Cover of journal Research in African Literatures, African Literary History and the Cold War, Volume 50, Number 3, Fall 2019

Alternative Solidarities: Black Diasporas and Cultural Alliances during the Cold War. Special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Co-editor (with Cedric Tolliver and Julie Tolliver). 50.4 (2014).

Articles and Chapters

“Cold War Solidarities and Twenty-First-Century Frayed Alliances: Romanian-Ghanaian Vantage Points.” Comparative Literature Studies. Forthcoming Fall 2022.

“Afro-Asian Internationalism: Leftist Solidarities during the Cold War.” PMLA 136.5 (October 2021): 800-808.

"Introduction: The Cultural Cold War and the Global South: Sites of Contest and Communitas." Co-authored with Kerry Bystrom and Katherine Zien. The Cultural Cold War and the Global South: Sites of Contest and Communitas. Co-edited with Kerry Bystrom and Katherine Zien). Ƭ֦Ƶ York, Routledge, 2021, 1-25.

“The Battle of Conferences: Cultural Decolonisation and Global Cold War.” The Palgrave Handbook to Cold War Literature. Ed. Andrew Hammond. Cham, Switzerland: Plagrave, 2020, 163-82.

“Introduction: African Literature and the Cold War. What Is at Stake?” Special issue on African Literary History and the Cold War. Research in African Literatures. Eds. Monica Popescu and Bhakti Shringarpure. 50.3 (Fall 2019).

“‘Children of the Cold War’: Rethinking African Literary Generations through the Global Conflict.” The Routledge Handbook of African Literature. Eds. Moradewun Adejunmobi and Carli Coetzee. Ƭ֦Ƶ York: Routledge, 2019, 21-34.

“Revolutionary Times: Mongane Wally Serote and Cold War Fiction.” South African Writing in Transition. Eds. Rita Barnard and Andrew van der Vlies. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, 33-54.

“Transnational Dimensions in Nelson Mandela’s Autobiographical Writing.” JELL: Journal of English Language and Literature 62.1 (2016): 35-53.

"Nelson Mandela." Co-authored with Rita Barnard. Mental Maps in the Era of Detente and the End of the Cold War, 1968-1991. Eds. Steven Casey and Jonathan Wright. Ƭ֦Ƶ York: Plagrave, 2015. 236-49.

“On the Margins of the Black Atlantic: Angola, the Second World, and the Cold War.” Research in African Literatures. Special Issue on Africa and the Black Atlantic. 45.3 (2014): 91-109.

“Aesthetic Solidarities: Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the Cold War.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50.4 (2014): 384-397.

“War Room Stories and the Rainbow Nation: Competing Narratives in Contemporary South African Literature.” National Myths: Constructed Pasts, Contested Presents. Ed. Gerard Bouchard. London: Routledge, 2013. 191-205.

“Lewis Nkosi in Warsaw: Translating Eastern European Experiences for an African Audience.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48.2 (May 2012). 178-89.

“Reading through a Cold War Lens: Apartheid-Era Literature and the Global Conflict.” Current Writing 24.1 (May 2012): 37-49.

“Translations: Lenin’s Statues, Post-communism and Post-apartheid.” Marginal Spaces: Ivan Vladislavić. Ed. Gerald Gaylard. Wits University Press, 2011.

Reprint of: “Translations: Lenin’s Statues, Post-communism and Post-apartheid.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 16.2 (2003): 407-423.

“Voortrekkers of the Cold War: Enacting the South African Past and Present in Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples.” Settler and Creole Reenactment. Eds. Jonathan Lamb and Vanessa Agnew. Ƭ֦Ƶ York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 123-137.

Reworked version of: “Mirrorings: Communists, Capitalists and Voortrekkers of the Cold War.” Beyond the Border War: Ƭ֦Ƶ Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late-Cold War Conflicts. Eds. Peter Vale and Gary Baines. Pretoria: UNISA, 2008. 42-55.

“Waiting for the Russians: Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburgand the Logic of Late Post-colonialism.” Postcolonialism: South/African Perspectives. Ed. Michael Chapman. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 106-24.

Reprint of: “Waiting for the Russians: Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg and the Logic of Late Post-colonialism.” Current Writing. 19.1 (April 2007): 1-20.

“Licence for Shooting: South African Literature, the Media, and the Cold War.” Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa 13.1 (2008): 92-104.

“Imaging the Past: Cultural Memory in Dubravka Ugrešić’s The Museum of Unconditional Surrender. Studies in the Novel. 39.3 (Fall 2007): 336-56.

“Cold War and Hot Translation.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. 8.1 (January 2007): 83-90.

“Cultural Liminality and Hybridity: The Romanian Transition.”Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers. The Paradoxes of Progress: Globalization and Postsocialist Cultures. (Special Issue). 86 (Fall 2001). 47-68.

“Writing in and Writing out—Race and Ethnicity in The Sound and the Fury.” Transatlantic Connections: Essays in Cultural Relocation. Ed. R. Mihaila and I. Pana, Bucuresti: Integral, 2000, 49-62.

“Liminal Space in the Post-colonial Context.” Studii de Limbi si Literaturi Moderne. Timisoara: Mirton, 1999, 130-38.

“On the Borderline: Liminal Aspects in Malouf’s Fiction.” Bulletin of the Transilvania University 6.41 (1999): 173-79.

Reviews and Public Scholarship

“.” Warscapes. December 27, 2018.

  • Republished as: “” The Mantle. April 25, 2019.

Berfrois. August 29, 2013.

  • Republished in abridged form as: Africa Is a Country.
Awards, honours, and fellowships: 
  • Visiting Scholar, Ƭ֦Ƶ York University, Department of English, Spring 2019
  • , The Met Breuer, Ƭ֦Ƶ York, 2019
  • for, 2012
  • Resident Faculty Fellow, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, 2013-2015
  • ,University of Cambridge (jointly with Visiting Fellowship, Wolfson College), Easter Term 2012
  • SSHRC Insight Grant, 2012-2016
  • Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture,Établissement de nouveaux professeurs-chercheurs,2008-2011
  • Delta Kappa Gamma International Fellowship for Women Researchers
  • Open Society Institute, Global Supplementary Grant
  • Dean’s Scholar, University of Pennsylvania
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