No. 4 (2026): Helsinki Romanian Studies Journal

FOREWORD

As HEROS Journal enters its fourth issue, it continues to develop as a space for international scholarly dialogue dedicated to Romanian Studies. The contributions brought together in this volume reflect the breadth of contemporary research in the field, illustrating how Romanian language, literature, history, and culture continue to generate productive conversations across disciplines, methodologies, and academic traditions. In doing so, the journal reaffirms its commitment to promoting innovative research while strengthening the international community of scholars engaged with Romanian Studies.

Several contributions in this issue revisit historical and linguistic questions through innovative perspectives. Carmen Dura continues the research initiated in the previous issue of HEROS Journal with the second part of her detailed analysis of Johann Ignaz von Felbiger's eighteenth-century bilingual educational work, this time focusing on syntactic phenomena regarding the predicate, the predicative complement, and the verb's arguments. The volume further explores linguistic history through Adam Mikołaj Matuszczak’s investigation of Serbian influences on the vocabulary related to traditional culture and cuisine in the Banat Romanian dialect, illustrating the complex cultural and linguistic interactions that have shaped regional varieties of Romanian.

The issue also opens new directions of inquiry into literary, cultural, and contemporary social phenomena. Alexandra Olteanu examines the emergence and marketing of the historical novel as a literary genre in the nineteenth century, while Anamaria Radu and Alexandra Cotoc propose a thought-provoking exploration of artificial intelligence and Romanian cultural heritage through the concept of Eminescu’s AI doppelgänger. Cristina Hurdubaia’s ethnographic case study offers valuable insights into processes of self-cultivation and domestic reconfiguration in the context of Romanian migration, further expanding the journal’s interdisciplinary perspective.

The volume concludes with two book reviews that further enrich its intellectual and thematic scope. Brendan Humphreys offers a compelling discussion of Bruce Lincoln's Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholar's Hidden Past and His Protégé’s Unsolved Murder, an important and thought-provoking work that sheds new light on the life of the Romanian historian of religions Ioan Petru Culianu and the circumstances surrounding his unsolved murder. The issue closes with Nadia-Flaviana Albescu’s engaging review of Crina-Magdalena Zărnescu’s Delicatese cu spirit și savoare. Identități culturale și culinare, inviting readers into a delightful exploration of culinary traditions, cultural memory, and shared identities, and providing a fitting conclusion to a volume that celebrates the richness and diversity of Romanian Studies.

This issue also marks the beginning of a new institutional collaboration with the Romanian Language Lectureships at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Heidelberg University, initiated through the commemorative conference dedicated to Alexandru Cihac, organized at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in November 2025 to mark the bicentenary of the scholar’s birth. We are particularly grateful to Professors Anca Gâță and Romanița Constantinescu for this fruitful partnership, which will continue with the publication of the special fifth issue of HEROS Journal (December 2026), dedicated to the topic of etymology.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the authors who have entrusted HEROS Journal with their work and whose contributions continue to shape the journal’s academic profile. We are equally indebted to the peer reviewers, whose rigorous evaluations, thoughtful recommendations, and unwavering commitment to academic excellence ensure the quality and integrity of every issue. Their work remains essential not only to maintaining the journal's scholarly standards but also to strengthening the growing HEROS community as an international space of intellectual exchange, collegiality, and collaborative research.

We hope that this fourth issue will inspire further research, encourage new interdisciplinary collaborations, and continue to foster meaningful dialogue across disciplines and national academic traditions, further consolidating HEROS Journal as an international forum for Romanian Studies.

                                                                                                                                                                The Editors

 

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

Emilia Ivancu – Helsinki University, Finland

Editor

Monica Huțanu - University of Belgrade, Serbia

Editor

Tomasz Klimkowski – Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland

Junior editor

Pavel Falaleev – University of Helsinki, Finland

Layout editor, proofreader

Oana Topală – Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Belgium

           

ADVISORY BOARD

Ioana Bican – Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Cristina Bogdan – University of Bucharest, Romania

Radu Bogdan – Tulane University, New Orleans, USA

Marina Cap-Bun – University of Constanța, Romania

Roxana Ciolăneanu – University of Lisbon, Portugal

Silvio Cruschina – Helsinki University, Finland

Daiana Cuibus – Babes-Bolyai University/Romanian Language Institute, Romania

Baudouin Decharneux – L’Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium

Iulia Dondorici – Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Camelia Sanda Dragomir – University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, Italy

Cécile Folschweiller – INALCO, Paris, France

Gabriela Haja – ‘Alexandru Philippide’ Institute of Romanian Philology, Romania

Jukka Havu – University of Tampere, Finland

Kazimierz Jurczak – Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

Thede Kahl – Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany          

Martin Maiden – University of Oxford, UK

Roberto Merlo – University of Turin, Italy

Matti Miestamo – Helsinki University, Finland

Oana Murăruș – University of Bucharest, Romania

Paul Nanu - University of Alba Iulia, Romania

Florin Oprescu – Universität Wien, Austria

Jana Páleníková – Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia

Cristian Preda – University of Bucharest, Romania

Teodora Șerban-Oprescu – Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Fernando Sánchez-Miret – The University of Salamanca, Spain

Gabriel Sandu – Helsinki University, Finland

Ingmar Söhrman – University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković – Institute for Balkan Studies, Belgrade

Alice Toma – L’Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium

Dragoș Ursu – University of Alba Iulia, Romania     

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

              

FOREWORD….. 7

ARTICLES

CARMEN DURA

Ediția bilingvă a lui Johann Ignaz von Felbiger „Ducere de mână către cinste și direptate, adecă la copii rumuneştii neuniții cei ce în şcole cele mici să învață spre cetanie rănduită carte”, Viena, 1777. (II) Predicatul, numele predicativ și argumentele verbului….. 9

The Bilingual Edition of Johann Ignaz von Felbiger „Ducere de mână către cinste și direptate, adecă la copii rumuneştii neuniții cei ce în şcole cele mici să învață spre cetanie rănduită carte”,Vienna, 1777. (II) The Predicate, the Predicative Complement, and the Verb’s Arguments

ANAMARIA RADU, ALEXANDRA COTOC           

Synthetic Heritage: Eminescu’s AI Doppelgänger in Romanian Digital Dreamscape….. 26      

ADAM MIKOŁAJ MATUSZCZAK

Influența sârbească asupra vocabularului legat de cultura tradițională şi gastronomie al dialectului bănățean al limbii române….. 39

Serbian Influences on Vocabulary Related to Traditional Culture and Cuisine in the Banat Romanian Dialect

ALEXANDRA OLTEANU

The Marketed Birth of a Genre: Nineteenth‑Century Definitions of the Historical Novel….. 55                                  

CRISTINA HURDUBAIA

Self-Cultivation and Domestic Reconfiguration in Migration: A Heuristic Ethnographic Case Study….. 71     

 

BOOK REVIEWS

BRENDAN HUMPHREYS

Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholars’ Hidden Past and His Protégé’s Unsolved Murder, by Bruce Lincoln….. 83  

NADIA-FLAVIANA ALBESCU

À la table des idées : gastronomie, mémoire et identités en partage. Delicatese cu spirit și savoare. Identități culturale și culinare de Crina-Magdalena Zărnescu….. 87

 

INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHORS ….. 90 

REVIEWERS OF THE CURRENT ISSUE ….. 92

 

INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHORS   

Nadia-Flaviana ALBESCU is Associate Professor at the University of Alba Iulia and a teacher at the ‘Regina Maria’ High School of Arts. Her research focuses on literary studies, cultural identity, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature, with particular interest in the relationship between memory, aesthetics, and cultural practices.

Alexandra COTOC is a Lecturer, PhD, in the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania. Her research focuses on Internet Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, and Digital Humanities. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Summer School in Digital Humanities, Culture & Technology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and an alumna of the European Summer School in Digital Humanities in Leipzig, Germany. She teaches undergraduate courses in English grammar, as well as courses and seminars on New Media Communication and Digital Culture, Sociolinguistics, and Internet Linguistics.

Carmen DURA is a Romanian language lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad (Republic of Serbia). She holds degrees in literature, theology, and music from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași and the George Enescu University of Arts in Iași. Her doctoral dissertation, Pragmatics of Romanian Dramatic Discourse in the 20th Century, was defended in 2007 at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași under the supervision of Professor Constantin Frâncu. Her research focuses on linguistics, particularly linguistic pragmatics, Romanian literature, with a special interest in the works of Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania and Nicolae Steinhardt, as well as sacred music preserved in manuscript and early printed sources.

Brendan HUMPHREYS is an Associate Professor of East European Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. He is a political historian and anthropologist whose research focuses on the Cold War, the Balkans, carceral studies, nationalism and exceptionalism, and the sociology of conflict. His publications include Russian Modernization: A New Paradigm (with Markku Kivinen, Routledge, 2021) and From Gulag to Euro Prisons (with Judith Pallot, Palgrave, 2026).

Cristina HURDUBAIA is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at INALCO (PLIDAM, Paris). Her research focuses on domestic objects in migration, with particular attention to regimes of presence, everyday practices, and the organisation of domestic space in transnational contexts, as well as the symbolic and interpretive dimensions associated with objects. Her work brings together anthropology, material culture studies, migration studies, and social museology.

Adam Mikołaj MATUSZCZAK holds a Bachelor’s degree in Romanian Philology and a Master's degree in French Philology from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. In his Bachelor's and Master's theses, as well as in articles and conference presentations, he has focused primarily on the history of language, linguistic geography, dialectology, etymology, and toponymy. He is particularly interested in linguistic situations in border regions and in areas where representatives of more than one nation or ethnic group live and use multiple languages. In his research, he seeks to combine traditional linguistic approaches with the active use of new technologies, particularly in language research conducted in online environments. This year, he is preparing to begin doctoral studies at his alma mater.

Anamaria RADU is a Junior Lecturer, PhD, in the Department of Romanian Language, Culture and Civilization at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She is currently a Romanian language lecturer (Romanian Language Institute, Bucharest) at the Institut für Romanistik, Humboldt University of Berlin. In addition to teaching and assessing Romanian as a foreign language, her research focuses on Language Acquisition, Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, and Digital Humanities.

Alexandra OLTEANU is an Assistant Professor at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania, and a member of the Digital Humanities Laboratory research team. Her research focuses on Cultural Studies, Digital Literary Studies, Genre Theory, and Literary History and Theory, with particular emphasis on nineteenth-century Romanian literature and the evolution of the Romanian novel. She has published extensively on nineteenth-century Romanian literature, including studies on the outlaw and historical novel, literary myths, social banditry, Romanian literary terminology, and the emergence of the Romanian historical novel. Her most recent publications appeared between 2023 and 2025.

 

REVIEWERS OF ISSUE No. 4/2026

Adina CHIRILĂ – West University of Timişoara, Romania

Romanița CONSTANTINESCU  – Heidelberg University, Germany

Anca GÂŢĂ – University ‘Dunărea de Jos’, Galați, Romania

Ovidiu IVANCU – Vilnius University, Lithuania

Paul NANU – University of Alba Iulia, Romania

Virđinija POPOVIĆ – University of Novi Sad, Serbia

Cristina SICOE – West University of Timişoara, Romania

Liliana SOARE – University of Pitești,  Romania