Synergy

9

Authors: Mihaela ARSENE

The concept of the engaged university has been attracting attention, energy and resources in the U.S. academic environment for the past 50 years, with the twofold benefit of community development/neighborhood enhancement/community revival, as the case may be, on the one hand, and student development in the wake of their participation in the university-initiated community projects, on the other. The paper focuses primarily on the educational benefits community-engaged universities are able to provide their students, thus building both their civic spirit and social responsibility, as well as the soft skills they need in order to perform successfully in the community-enhancement projects their university is putting forward and afterwards in their own careers.

10

Authors: Mihaela ARSENE

In higher education, in Romania and elsewhere, writing is looked upon as a key learning tool and also a core assessment tool. If that is the case, is there a need for teaching academic writing to business students in Bucharest and do we offer students any models meant to develop their awareness of writing academic conventions or practices? Do undergraduate students pick up academic writing by sheer osmosis or does it need to be specifically taught? When, where and how to teach academic writing are some of the questions the paper will address, at the same time highlighting the practical solutions U.S. universities have developed to their students’ benefit.

11

Authors: Cristina-Maria PRELIPCEANU

Country branding or nation branding refers to the common images, perceptions and associations people have about a country or a nation. Therefore this concept can be an important tool used by countries to create, change or promote a distinct self-image and to gain international reputation. A country’s brand is strongly related to its image, both the self-image created and transmitted by its citizens and the image projected and interpreted by foreigners. At present in the context of globalization the strategy of positioning a country in front of the other “world players” has a key role in the international arena for commercial, economic and political purposes. That is why the aim of the present paper is to analyse the concept of country branding as well as the related concepts and to critically examine Romania’s branding campaigns and their effects, while also putting forward some suggestions for changing the stereotypes about Romania.

11

Authors: Roxana MARINESCU

Since its beginnings in the 1970’s to the proclamation of its death in 2010-2011 by the most important European leaders of the time (Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron) to its present day reinterpretation due to increasing migration and globalization, multiculturalism has been on the agenda of policy makers worldwide. And rightly so, as a liberal multicultural society, at least in theory, “cherishes the diversity of and encourages a creative dialogue between its different cultures and their moral visions.“ (Lord Bhikhu Parekh, What is Multiculturalism?). This is indeed the desired (some would say utopian)perspective, but how successfully has it been implemented? As far back as 2007 Will Kymlicka was challenging his readers with two possible options: either to abandon the project of internationalizing multiculturalism (highly undesirable, in his opinion) or to rethink it and put it on a more coherent footing of liberal multiculturalism (Multicultural Odysseys). In this paper I address multiculturalism in the postcommunist and postcolonial contexts and explore possible points of intersection between the two. If, as have shown elsewhere, the postcommunist condition is (to a certain extent) part of the postcolonial framework, I am seeking to find out whether their approaches towards multiculturalism are similar. The case studies analyzed are Romania and India and the respective states’ policies towards ‘nation’, as well as their relations with the minorities living on their present day territories. With different historical, political, ideological and geographical backgrounds, the two countries are taken as illustrations to test the validity of liberal multiculturalism and its theoretical and practical potential.

12

Authors: Clelia CLINI

Despite the fact that immigration to Italy is not a new phenomenon, the Italian dominant discourse still treats it like an emergency. This attitude has important consequences for the way in which immigrants are represented in mainstream media and often fuels feelings of ‘hysteria’ about immigrants (Law, 2010: 208). In this paper I will discuss the politics of representation of dominant political and media discourses and will juxtapose them to the emerging counterdiscourses of “second generation” activists who, while refusing to be called ‘immigrants’, claim their right to representation, and effectively contribute to the creation of a multicultural country.

15

Authors: Iulia RĂȘCANU

Continuous and various flows of immigrants (especially from the Indian subcontinent) to the UK throughout history have made the country a multi-ethnic, multi-faith one. The examination of multiculturalism in Britain focuses on the period starting with the middle twentieth century until the present. The article includes some of the major political views upon multiculturalism in connection to the individual, to communities and the large society, including some of the most infamous political speeches of British political figures. These views are utilised as analytical tools for the interpretation of feature films released in the U.K. in the 1990s-beginning of the twenty-first century.