Course MIR1104 · Year IV · Autumn 2026-2027

HISTORICAL SEMANTICS IN TRANSYLVANIA

Compulsory course in Regional Identities in Central Eastern Europe, taught by Laura-Claudia Stanciu.

Overview

Lecturer
Laura-Claudia Stanciu
Seminar tutor
Laura-Claudia Stanciu
Type of course
Compulsory
Language of instruction
Romanian
Erasmus language
English
Domain
History - Masters
Field of study
Regional Identities in Central Eastern Europe
Form of education
Full-time
Form of instruction
Class
Credit awarded by
Grade
Teaching methods
Lecture, conversation, exemplification.
Entry requirements
Regional identity - national identity in Enlightenment Transylvania; Culture and civilization in Romanian society in the modern epoch

Aims

Knowing, understanding and a correct using of fundamental ideas concerning concepts specific to Historical Semantics in Transylvania.

Finding and using of the sources which are characteristic to historical semantics for Transylvania as well as for East-Central Europe.

Knowing, understanding and a correct using of fundamental ideas concerning concepts specific to Historical Semantics in Transylvania.

Course contents

1. Historic discourse and semantics analyse: Fundamental directions. 2. About text. 3. About context. 4. About text’s hermeneutics. 5. The historical discourse and its analysis in the historical research. 6. Types of analysing the historical discourse. 7. Meaning and semnification in the Transylvanian historical discourse. 8. Context - text – subtext. Politics and culture in Enlightnment Mitteleuropa. 9. Types and categories of sources used in Transylvanian Enlightment. 10. Politics terminology from Transylvanian School to 1848. 11. Historical discourse in Transylvania after 1848: historical semantics and politics semantics. Conceptual History in Romanian Historiography. 12. The meaning of the concepts homeland, patriotism, Europa/European for 18th-19th centuries Transylvania. 13. The meaning of the concept poverty: Poorness in the Transylvanian Romanian’s Language (in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries). 14. Course’s conclusions. Evaluation

Learning outcomes

• retrieval of written sources on the historical past; • establishing historical facts on the basis of historical sources and outside of these; • the concrete production of new historical knowledge on the basis of deeper insights within the study of an epoch and/or of a medium complexity historical subject.

Assessment

Written paper – interpretative essay – 60%; continuous assessment – 40%.

Recommended reading

The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Series: Cultural Memory in the Present
Koselleck, Reinhart
Stanford, 2002 · 180
Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Series: Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought
Koselleck, Reinhart
New York, 2004 · 240
„About National Identity in Transylvania. The Concept of Fatherland for Transylvanian Romanians between 1700 and 1848”, în Brukenthalia
Stanciu, Laura
Romanian Cultural History Review. Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei, Sibiu, 2011 · 29-43
Essays on Romanian Intellectual History
Neumann, Victor
Timisoara, 2008 · 36
Deconstructing History
Munslow, Alun
London & New York, 1997 · 120