Alina Ciobotaru

Contact address:

Bucharest, Romania

Email: alinaciob14@yahoo.com

Employment:

April 2013- present Romanian for expats and English trainer at Wordland International (Bucharest, Romania)

Description of job: I am responsible for writing the course books for my courses and delivering the courses to mostly young adults and adults. I teach both Romanian Language and Culture lessons, as well as English grammar, vocabulary and culture lessons, which are individualized for each group of students. We work with multinationals and institutions such as embassies, with expats and their immediate family (spouses and children) and in some cases with individuals that contact us directly.

Dec. 2012- May 2013 English trainer at Pro-Info Association (UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH-EAST EUROPE “LUMINA”)

Description of job: I

Feb. 2012- June 2012 Intern at the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

Education:

Oct. 2013- present Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Languages

and Literatures, University of Bucharest, Romania (American Studies

Department)

2011- 2013 Master of Arts in American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest

1

2008- 2011 Bachelor of Arts, section Romanian Language and Literature –English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest

Awards:

June 2014 Qualification as a Romanian Public Speaker in the first international debate project entitled Closer2Oxford meets Diwanieh for the student exchange in public speaking in Amman, Jordan which took place in June 2014 in Jordan (organized by ARDOR – The Romanian Society for Debate and Oratory through its on-going project Closer2Oxford with the support of the Anna Lindh Foundation and the Jordanian foundation Leaders of Tomorrow )

Febr.-May 2014: Qualified in the national level of the debate project Closer2Oxford meets Diwanieh; participated in a series of local training sessions in debate and oratory and a series of international online debate contests within the project; in the end, qualified at the international level of the contest

Oct. 2012- Jun. 2013 Academic excellence scholarship offered by the University Bucharest and the Romanian Government (450 Ron per month)

Nov. 28- Dec. 2 2012 Qualification as an International Public Speaker at the 2012 International Final Event of Debate@Europe project, Amsterdam

May 2012 First Prize at the national debating contest “Dezbate Romania!” (“Debate Romania!”) organized by the foundation “Dan Voiculescu” in collaboration with the TV channel Antena 1 (1000 euros)

October 28-30 2011 Special Prize offered by the academic journal “Transilvania” for a paper on the Romanian poet Lucian Blaga delivered at the National Student Colloquium “Lucian Blaga”

2

Volunteer work:

August 2015- present Digital Promoter at GEYC (Group of the European Youth for Change)

February -June 2014 Contributed as a volunteer in the project “Is the Gay Pride March still necessary?”organized by ARDOR : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o03xzWnLmi8

January- June 2007 Participated as a volunteer in the project “A second chance to life” (“A doua sansa pentru viata”) involving children infected with HIV/AIDS from the foster home “Sf. Maria” (Saint Mary), Golesti, Vrancea County

Publications

‘The Construction of Ambivalent Magical-Realist Masculine Spaces in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Ștefan Agopian’s Tache de Catifea [The Velvet Man]’. Comparatism, Identitate, Comunicare. ed. Emilia Parpală. Craiova: Universitaria, 2015. (forthcoming)

‘Concert baroc și Pașii pierduți. Insinuarea tacită a politicului în teoria unei arte: categoriile infinitului, indefinitului și a finitului’ [.Concierto barroco and Los pasos perdidos. The silent Permeation of the Political in a Theory of Art: the Categories of the Infinite, Indefinite and of the Finite’]. Studii de literatură comparată, iconologie și ekphrastica. coord. Elena Ionescu and Ruxandra Iordache. București: Universitatea București Publishing House, 2015 (forthcoming).

‘Biblia păcătoșilor’ [The Siners’ Bible][ Review of the book Viața lui Kostas Venetis [Kostas Venetis’ life] by Octavian Soviany]. Literatorul. no. 147-148 (August-October 2011): 16.

http://www.bibmet.ro/Uploads/Literatorul_nr_147-148.pdf

‘Virgil Nemoianu: o lecție de abordare critică interdisciplinară’ [‘Virgil Nemoianu: an Example of an Interdisciplinary Critical Approach’] [Review of the volume Virgil Nemoianu-70]. Caiete Critice no. 14 (2011): 14-17.

http://caietecritice.fnsa.ro/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/6-2011.pdf

3

‘Relația dintre criza gnoseologică și <<marea trecere>> la Lucian Blaga. O perspectivă teologică’ [‘The Relationship between the Gnoseological Crisis and <<The Great Passage>> in Lucian Blaga’s Writings: A Theological Perspective’]. Transilvania Sibiu, Nr. 5 (2011): 52-55. (also in Caietele <<Lucian Blaga>>

http://www.revistatransilvania.ro/nou/ro/anul-editorial-2011/cat_view/45-anul-editorial-2011.html

National Conference Papers and Presentations in Workshops

‘Internet freedom and ways of restricting it. Surveillance”. Presentation given in the workshop “Media and Social Media: Tools of Power”, ISHA Bucharest [The International Students of History Association] International Summer Seminar “Symbols and Figures of Power”, 3-9 July 2012, Bucharest, Romania.

‘The politics of empowering by showing. Case study: the American film <<Bamboozled>>’. Colocviu științific anual în științele comunicării [Annual Scientific Colloquium in Communication Sciences]. The Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, 18-19 May 2012, Bucharest, Romania.

‘The Relationship between the Gnoseological Crisis and <<The Great Passage>> in Lucian Blaga’s Writings: A Theological Perspective’, The National Student Colloquium ‘Lucian Blaga’. Lucian Blaga University, 12th Edition, 28-30 October 2010, Sibiu, Romania.

International Conference Papers

4

‘Téa Obreht’s Magical Balkan World in The Tiger’s Wife (2011) and the upside-down Ruritanian romance’, First Biennial EAAS Women’s Network Symposium: The State of the Nation: American Women in the Twenty-First Century, European Association for American Studies’ Women Network, Marie Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland , Friday, March 27, 2015.

‘The Construction of Ambivalent Magico-Realist Masculine Spaces in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Stefan Agopian’s Tache de Catifea [The Velvet Man]’, COMPARATIVISM, IDENTITY, COMMUNICATION (CIC2014), The Seventh Edition, Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova, Romania & The Society of Philological Sciences, 17-18 October 2014, Craiova, Romania.

‘From Temporal Art to Visual Art: Hybrid Identities in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts and the Disney animated film Mulan’, the international conference Literature and the Arts, Doctoral School for Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Bucharest, 16 May 2014, Bucharest, Romania.

‘Gertrude Stein’s American-ness/European-ness’, Transnational Women’s Literature in Europe. Department of Gender Studies. Central European University in cooperation with FP7 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship and Akedemie Schloss Solitude, 24-26 May 2013, Budapest, Hungary.

Translations:

- Collaborator for the volume “Biography after Communism: Romanian Poetry after 1989″, edited by Prof. Dr. Gene Tanta, which will be published in the USA with the support of the Romanian –American Fulbright Commission

Affiliations:

- Member of The Romanian Society for English and American Studies- Member of The European Society for English Studies - Member of the Society for Romanian Studies

5