ABSTRACT Tunisia’s pavilion at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition was more than just an Orientalist set piece on the Seine. Its components, by French architect and archaeologist Henri Saladin, incorporated recognisable elements drawn from several Tunisian monuments, while its functional market (souk) staffed by Tunisian merchants and craftsmen attracted considerable attention. Transcending the spectacle, the complex also had didactic aims. Its main building housed three distinct sections that featured exhibitions on agriculture, industry, and art and archaeology, reflecting the priorities of the relatively new French colonial administration (1881–1956). The pavilion’s evocation of Tunisia’s noteworthy Roman history in its central space celebrated ancient productivity while substantiating contemporary narratives that claimed the Roman Empire as precedent for France’s North African interventions. This article situates Saladin’s pavilion within the context of late nineteenth-century agricultural settlement policies in Tunisia and parses components of the pavilion’s structure and displays in light of developing colonialist rhetoric that was both retrospective and opportunistic in its support of emigration at a time of intense demographic competition with Italy in occupied Tunisia.

Alina Bako presents Marius Turda's 2024 book, “În căutarea românului perfect: Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă” [In search of the perfect Romanian: National specificity, racial degeneration, and social selection in modern Romania] (published by Polirom), as a landmark and indispensable synthesis in the field of Romanian cultural and intellectual history studies. Marius Turda, a professor at Oxford Brookes University (UK) and a leading international expert on eugenics, racism, and biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe, delivers a rigorous, evidence-based demythologization of modern Romanian history. At the core of his argument lies a stark conclusion: the notion of a “perfect Romanian” - an idealized, biologically and culturally pure national archetype - has never truly existed and was always a constructed fantasy rooted in anxiety, exclusion, and pseudoscientific ambition. Instead, Turda advocates for a healthier alternative: a tolerant, civic-oriented form of patriotism grounded in inclusion, democratic values, and critical self-reflection rather than ethnic or racial essentialism. The book meticulously brings together two dominant yet conflicting visions of Romanian identity that emerged in the 19th and especially the 20th centuries. On one side, romantic and literary discourses - prominent in the works of writers, poets, and cultural critics - celebrated the Romanian peasant as the embodiment of authentic national virtues: simplicity, moral purity, and deep connection to the land and traditions. On the other side, emerging medical, anthropological, and eugenic discourses expressed profound alarm over perceived "racial degeneration," demographic decline, and biological “weakness” among the population. Medicine was increasingly reframed not merely as a healing profession but as a “national science” tasked with engineering biological improvement through selective reproduction, social hygiene policies, and interventions aimed at strengthening the Romanian “race”. Turda examines these ideas with scholarly impartiality and nuance, situating Romania firmly within broader European trends. He shows how interwar eugenics, scientific racism, and antisemitism were not marginal or uniquely Romanian phenomena but part of a continent-wide intellectual current embraced by scientists, politicians, and cultural figures. In Romania, this manifested in exclusionary policies and rhetoric targeting Jews, Roma communities, people with disabilities, and other groups deemed “undesirable" or “degenerative”. Eugenic nationalism gained particular momentum after the creation of Greater Romania in 1918, finding enthusiastic support among prominent intellectuals such as Mihai Eminescu (in his proto-nationalist writings), Octavian Goga, Emil Cioran (in his early, controversial phase), and numerous physicians, biologists, and anthropologists who promoted ideas of racial purification and social selection. The analysis does not stop at the interwar period. Turda traces the persistence and adaptation of these discriminatory logics into the post-World War II era, including under communist rule, where certain biopolitical concerns were reframed in ideological terms while discriminatory practices against minorities and “socially unfit” individuals continued in different forms. By placing Romanian debates in transnational context, the book demonstrates how local ideas about national specificity and racial improvement circulated within - and were influenced by European networks of eugenic thought, from German Rassenhygiene to Anglo-American sterilization movements and French degeneration theories. Ultimately, În căutarea românului perfect functions as both a scholarly contribution and a vital educational and civic tool. It urges Romanian society to confront uncomfortable aspects of its past, dismantle lingering national obsessions with ethnic purity and biological exceptionalism, and prevent the repetition of historical abuses rooted in exclusion and pseudoscience. The book's significance has been widely recognized: in 2025, it was awarded the prestigious Observator Cultural Prize in the Essay/Publicistics category, affirming its impact on contemporary Romanian intellectual discourse. Through this meticulously researched and courageously honest volume, Marius Turda invites readers into an open, unflinching dialogue about the making (and unmaking) of modern Romania.

This narrative aims to provide an overview of public and private accounting of the ancient Roman empire, by covering a relatively unstudied period from the Roman Republic to the early Principate. Scattered references are accessed in essential Roman literary sources such as Cicero, Livy and others, supplemented by legal sources and contributions from eminent Roman historians such as Badian and Mommsen. The narrative for public accounting covers the organisation and role that scribae quaestori of the aerarium played in state accounting during the Republic. Specific attention is also given to the state fiscal administration reforms of Augustus that created a departmentalised civil service overseeing the imperial fiscus. The narrative for private accounting examines selected opinions on private law from Gaius Institutes and Digesta of Justinian to demonstrate the sophistication of Roman accounting practices, focusing on obligation by book entry. The narrative concludes with a detailed examination of the modern debate over the analysis that Columella provides for viticulture profitability.

The article examines the transformation of Roman history presentation in Soviet textbooks of the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the context of a generational shift within the scholarly community and the reassessment of Stalinera ideological paradigms. The key issue is how young scholars of Antiquity, A.L. Kats and A.I. Nemirovskiy, sought to reinterpret and reorganize learning material as part of the delegitimation process of the “slave revolution” concept as the previously dominant concept”, embedded in historiographical and educational practice since the mid-1930s.Applying a generational approach makes it possible to show that the new cohort, formed within the confines of Stalinist historiographical principle to bring greater vividness and historical specificity to the narrative, distancing their style from the uniform, heavily schematic language typical of textbooks of the 1930s-1940s. Yet this aspiration clashed with the ideological framework of Marxist-Leninist theory, which the younger researchers did not question. As a result, while preserving the key dogmas of the slaveowning mode of production, Kats and Nemirovskiy often reproduced Stalinera interpretations even more consistently, accentuating emotional and social dimensions of slavery. Moreover, the requirement to cite the “classics of Marxism-Leninism” introduced additional tensions between primary sources, contemporary historiography, and ideological prescriptions. The article demonstrates that attempts to construct a coherent narrative under these conditions led the authors into methodological impasses - ones that emerged primarily in the educational literature. Thus, the sphere of education became a domain in which the limitations of the dogmatized narrative manifested earlier than in academic scholarship, and where the efforts of the new generation of classical historians exposed the deeper contradictions of the Soviet historical model.

Am­mi­a­nus Marcellinus and the crisis following the Bat­tle of Adria­no­ple. The Battle of Adrianople (378 AD) was a turning point not only from a historical point of view, but also from a literary one. Among the authors who witness the crisis following this crucial moment in Roman history, Ammianus Marcellinus is the one who expresses a position that is not im­me­diately clear, unlike authors such as Themistius or Synesius of Cyrene. Above all, he reserves his considerations on this subject in the chapters where he addresses issues of historical methodology, showing how difficult it is to recount contem­po­rary events in his times.

The crisis of integrity, ethical disorientation, and the declining quality of strategic decision-making in contemporary leadership demand a robust and transhistorical normative foundation. The figure of King Solomon in ancient Israelite tradition represents a prototype of leadership legitimized by divine wisdom, making it critically relevant for scholarly examination. This study addresses the problem of how the construction of Solomon’s character and the praxis of his wisdom in Old Testament texts can be transformed into a conceptual paradigm for modern leadership without falling into historical romanticism. The objective of this research is to formulate a theoretical leadership model grounded in biblical wisdom through an analysis of Solomon’s character, theological orientation, and decision-making patterns. The method employed is a theological hermeneutical approach integrated with interdisciplinary literature studies, including leadership theory, public ethics, and Old Testament theology. The analysis focuses on key narratives that portray the judicial, administrative, and spiritual dimensions of Solomon’s leadership. The findings indicate that Solomon’s wisdom is theocentric, deliberative, and oriented toward distributive justice, thereby shaping an integrative and visionary model of leadership. The relevance of these findings lies in their capacity to offer a normative framework for leadership formation rooted in transcendent morality while remaining adaptive to modern social complexity. The novelty of this study resides in the formulation of a hermeneutical reconstruction model of Solomonic wisdom as a normative-strategic paradigm for the development of contemporary leadership theory based on sacred texts.

Capitalism: A historical romance BeckertSven, Capitalism: A Global History, Allen Lane/Penguin Random House: London, 2025; xiii + 1325 pp., £50.00 (hbk): ISBN: 9780241269053

The aim of this article is to provide a balanced assessment of the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi and his work within the socio-cultural context of Italy during the Mussolini regime, and to determine how the artist's apolitical stance made him a hostage to circumstances under the fascist dictatorship. The research methodology is based on a combination of the principles of historicism, cultural and systemic approaches, general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, generalization), and musicological tools (holistic and comparative analysis). The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that, drawing on foreign sources regarding cultural history and Italian music, as well as the results of a comprehensive comparative analysis of Respighi's musical heritage, the composer's creative biography and music are analyzed for the first time in domestic musicology within the socio-cultural context of 1920s and 1930s Italy. The article reveals how the artistic content of Respighi's music was manipulated by the leaders of the fascist dictatorship, leading to its integration into the process of myth-making and the reinforcement of the cult of personality. Conclusions. Respighi's reliance on national tradition exemplified the centripetal forces in the development of European music in the first half of the 20th century. The cultivation of the national spirit, the inherent decorativeness of the composer's music, and Benito Mussolini's admiration for it led to accusations of «grand nationalism». However, the composer's focus on early Italian music was directed toward genre, style, and content rather than the pursuit of nationalist ideologies. The tragedy of Ottorino Respighi's persona and his music lies in the fact that his traditionalist style and references to Roman history resonated with fascist ideals. It was precisely this resonance that for a long time prevented a balanced assessment of the composer and his creative legacy.

This study elucidates Luke’s analytical strategies for writing history in the book of Acts through comparison with the Roman historian Sallust, focusing on how both authors construct narratives of leadership. Although Sallust and Luke are rarely compared in New Testament scholarship due to conventional boundaries such as language, religion, and historical context, both authors deploy similar interpretive practices drawn from the broader milieu of Greco-Roman historiography. Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae presents Cicero as an ineffective leader who, despite suppressing Catiline’s conspiracy in 63 BCE, could not save Rome from moral decline. Conversely, Luke in the book of Acts, particularly in the Miletus Speech (Acts 20:17–38), depicts Paul as a leader whose tireless pastoral oversight caused the rise of Gentile Christianity across the Roman Empire. This comparative study reveals that Luke, like Sallust, shapes the past not merely by reporting events but by analyzing their significance through interpretive frameworks of leadership.

ABSTRACT This article reframes the contemporary “crisis” of the nation‐state not as a simple erosion of sovereignty but as a problem of spatial misalignment: adaptive states remain strategically embedded in dense transnational regimes, yet domestic legitimacy falters when unitary national imaginaries confront heterogeneous, multi‐sited social realities. Synthesizing globalization studies, identity transformation literature, and spatial theory, we conceptualize layered citizenship as a regime of constitutional equality coupled with differentiated access to political voice, cultural expression, and mobility, sustained by hierarchies of cultural legibility and securitized forms of visibility. We develop this argument through Türkiye's trajectory from late Ottoman plural imaginaries and Republican homogenization to contemporary geopolitical upscaling, showing how shifting spatial projects have configured unity and disunity across time. While external organizations recalibrate state functions without abolishing capacity, internal cohesion increasingly depends on integrating plural identities into the language and infrastructures of public space. As a constructive response, we reconstruct Blue Anatolianism not as historical romanticism but as a methodology of spatial commoning that relocates identity from blood to place and from essence to shared use. Through route pedagogy, in situ learning, multilingual signage, and conservation–use balances, we outline scalable commons‐oriented policies that render difference co‐present and publicly legible without undermining territorial integrity. The framework explains why conventional appeals to unity reproduce fragmentation and offers an implementable program to reconcile adaptive statehood with plural belongings. Though grounded in Türkiye, the argument travels to post‐imperial and metropolitan contexts, where spatial commons can realign sovereignty, territory, and identity by thickening shared infrastructures of narrative, route, use, and care.

Humour became prominent in romance fiction starting in the 1980s when American authors started incorporating elements of Hollywood romantic comedy to create romcom novels. This essay examines one such example, Here We Go Again (1986), by Joyce McGill. Published under a line of teen romances by Silhouette, the novel has many of the romcom’s components. McGill also creates metanarrative comedy, using a romance writer character to puncture the pretensions of romance’s critics. Lastly, she includes a second-chance romance plot that is resolved after other comic chaos. The novel is also worth adding to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) romance history—because it is an example of the genre’s whitewashed past. In the 1980s, many publishers asked BIPOC authors to write white characters and then marketed those novels as written by white authors. This is the case with Here We Go Again, since McGill was a penname for African American author Chassie West. Understanding the romcom genre, whether in film or novel form, can only be accurately done by studying such a text and its immediate political context in the 1980s US. Further, as a close reading of the novel shows, McGill questions white middle class mores even within the given constraints.

Abstract For several centuries, Brăila ( İbrail in Ottoman Turkish) and Giurgiu ( Yergöğü ) were under Ottoman rule. Their strategic site, notably in the military field, became significant during the Russo-Ottoman wars of the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Following the Peace Treaty of Adrianople (September 2, 1829), the two cities were restituted to Wallachia. Soon afterwards, the Russians, who administered Wallachia, Moldavia, and Silistra ( Eflak, Boğdan and Silistre ) until 1834, launched a significant transformation of their urban fabrics. This transformation involved converting the two main mosques into churches, each of which received three bells cast from melted Ottoman cannons. Although the historical background of the events from Giurgiu and Brăila is well known to Romanian historians and beyond, little has been discussed regarding questions such as the scenarios of power, borrowing Richard S. Wortman’s concept, or Russia’s manifestation of power on the Danube. Our contribution is a search for answers in this regard.

This article argues that Catharine Maria Sedgwick's 1827 historical novel Hope Leslie participates in the settler discourse of the “vanishing Indian” through instrumentalizing a trans settler character. Hope Leslie’s narrative rewrites Indigenous dispossession as an unavoidable tragedy in the service of settler Americanness. For this “vanishing” to take place, the novel's white trans character uses disguise to free a Pequot character from prison. That Pequot character, in turn, promptly vanishes from settler space and time along with the rest of the Pequot people. This essay examines the role of imagined settler transness in nineteenth‐century narratives of US colonization, particularly through the genre of the historical romance. Specifically, the utility of the trans settler character depends on their ability to reference the existence of Indigenous gender diversity through the racial fungibility of their disguise while also presenting the text an opportunity to capture and incorporate the radical potential of gender nonconformity for colonial use.

Abstract At the beginning of the 3rd century AD, Cassius Dio wrote his Roman History in Greek comprising some 80 books and covering the period from the origins of Rome until his own time. Unfortunately, the first books have not come down to us. To find out how Dio relates the origins of Rome, we must refer to a Byzantine summary, written by Johannes Zonaras (12th century) and to several fragments found in later grammarians or lawyers. All these texts confirm that, for Dio, there is absolutely no doubt about the Trojan origins of Latium's inhabitants.

The purpose of the article is to acquaint scientific circles and the widest readership of Ukraine with the translation from Romanian of the "History of Romanians" by Ioan-Aurel Pop, one of the most prominent modern Romanian historians, Rector of the University of Cluj named after Babeș-Boleai (2012-2020), President of the Romanian Academy (since 2018). The article characterizes the figures and features of the reign of the most prominent rulers of Romania at the end of the XIV – the beginning of the XVI century – Mircea cel Bătrân, Iancu (Ioan) de Hunedoara, Vlad Țepeș (Dracula) and Stephen the Great (Ștefan cel Mare). They remained in the history of Romanians, primarily due to their depiction by writers and historians during the Romantic era, true symbols of justice and notable fighters against the Ottoman Turks and defenders of the independence of their own states – the Romanian country, Transylvania and Moldova. And thanks to the vivid imagination of the Irish writer Bram Stoker, Vlad Țepeș became one of the most famous Romanians in Western Europe and the United States as Dracula, the classic "vampire". The master of Moldova Stefan (whose monument is an adornment of modern Chișinău) under the name Stephanus ille magnus ("Stephen the Great"), went down in history and immortality. The personalities of – Mircea cel Bătrân, Iancu (Ioan) de Hunedoara, Vlad Țepeș (Dracula) and Stephen the Great (Ștefan cel Mare) are presented in the context of pan-European and world history.

The development of Nusantara Philosophy (Filsafat Nusantara) is inextricably linked to the politics of knowledge (philosophy) in Indonesia. Hitherto, Nusantara Philosophy has remained anchored in historical romanticism concerning the trajectory of philosophical thought in Indonesia. On the other hand, the paucity of futurist philosophical models or end-of-world philosophical approaches (apocalypse/post-apocalypse) in Indonesia poses a distinct challenge to the advancement of Nusantara Philosophy, particularly when addressing its own future. At this juncture, Nusantara Philosophy remains incomplete with itself, ensnared in issues of glorification, romanticism, uncertainty, and ambiguity surrounding its disparate, undirected concepts. Accordingly, this article illuminates several problems within Nusantara Philosophy through the lenses of archipelagic philosophical studies and speculative realism, to further elucidate the philosophical projections of Nusantara Philosophy when interrogating the Apocalypse. Certain analyses of Nusantara Philosophy merely catalog local knowledge, employing an approach inseparable from the cosmological-archipelagic model, wherein seas, mountains, and island expanses are envisioned as metaphysical agents serving as mediating mediums. Similarly, Nusantara Philosophy frequently generates diverse forms of speculative ethics that invariably compel consideration of specific moral values and cultural norms. Rather than seeking to transcend the universal claims of Western philosophy regarding apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic concepts, Nusantara Philosophy tacitly harbors a Ratu Adil (Just King) perspective to explicate the hyperobject of the end times.

Abstract: The assassination of Emperor Commodus brought an end to the reign of the Antonine dynasty after nearly a century, leaving the empire in a state of crisis. As a result, the empire found itself without a leader, and the situation quickly deteriorated. The Senate, overwhelmed by internal divisions, left the initiative to the Praetorian Guard, which attempted to establish a temporary government by putting the empire “up for auction.” But this temporary government was unable to withstand the ambitions of the legion commanders in different parts of the empire, leading to a series of civil wars and military usurpations. This chaotic period, known as the Year of the Five Emperors, saw two emperors assassinated and generals claiming the throne wage bloody wars for power. It was in this disorder that an African military leader of Berber-Punic origin, who did not belong to the circle of Rome's great noble families, emerged: Septimius Severus, who, at the head of his legions, emerged victorious from this political and military chaos. A military strategist, he laid the foundations for an authoritarian evolution of the Principate by relying on the Roman army with a series of measures and reforms that demonstrated a skill and leadership rarely seen in Roman history. He thus created a new dynasty known in history as the Severan dynasty, which he linked to the mythical Antonine line. Mots-clés : Rome, Crise, Septime Sévère, Réformes, Impact. Keywords : Rome, Crisis, Septimius Severus, Reforms, Impact.

This article traces the figure of the visible scientists across Romanian history and examines how such figures have shaped, and been shaped by, shifting relationships among science, society, and education. Drawing on historical analysis, science communication literature, and pedagogical theory, the paper first situates visible scientists in global contexts, then focuses on Romania’s distinctive trajectory from the twentieth century to the present. It shows how Communist era propaganda instrumentalised science to legitimise ideology, fostering both public fascination and deep seated mistrust that still colours attitudes toward STEM careers. Post 1989 reforms, while dismantling overt ideological control, largely retained top down, lecture centred pedagogies that discourage dialogic learning and public engagement. Case sketches of pre and postCommunist Romanian exemplars (e.g., Grigore Moisil, Solomon Marcus, Magda Stavinschi, Cristian Presură) illustrate the catalytic role they can play in inspiring youth and normalising the two way science–society interaction. Synthesising these insights, the paper argues that increasing the visibility and engagement of early career researchers can shift social norms, stimulate STEM enrolment, enlarge the pipeline of qualified teachers, and strengthen democratic deliberation on science linked issues.

The study of the Romanian archive at the Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos has long been a coveted aspiration of our national culture, one finally fulfilled with the publication of the volume of documents in 2019. This long-standing desire was mainly due to the firm and enduring presence of Stephen the Great and Holy in the history of the Zographou Monastery. For this reason, the bibliography concerning the relationship between the Romanians and this Athonite lavra is quite extensive, although it was based on a limited number of documents from the monastery’s archive and on the hope that more would be discovered once the archive was opened. For the fifteenth century, eight Romanian documents were known – all originals – dating from 1420 to 1499. After examining the Romanian archive, it was found that their number remained the same: four were deeds of donation issued by the rulers of Wallachia and Moldavia to the Zographou Monastery, and four were internal acts issued by Alexandru the Good and Stephen the Great for members of the princely family, boyars, and monasteries in Moldavia. To these we add the exceptional document of August 22, 1416, which records the beginnings of the relations between the Zographou Monastery and the Romanian principalities, as well as the “travelling” document of January 31, 1500, intended for the now-disappeared Kaprule Monastery (in Karyes, near the Protaton), both of which were eventually hosted by the Zographou archive. Towards the late 19th century, several photographs of original documents from the Zographou archive reached the Library of the Romanian Academy from various sources, along with summaries and Greek-language copies of several dozen Romanian documents from the archives of the Athonite monasteries. They also included acts from Zographou, later published by N. Iorga in the Hurmuzaki Collection. In the twentieth century, based on those photographs, numerous Romanian historians (Ioan Bogdan, St. Nicolaescu, M. Costăchescu, etc.) published the Slavic documents in their respective volumes or in the collection Documents Concerning the History of Romania (Documente privind istoria României – DIR), Series A and B. Their most recent edition appeared in the national collection of historical sources, Documenta Romaniae Historica (DRH), Series A. Moldavia, and Series B. Wallachia, as well as in Moldova in the Age of Feudalism (vol. VI, Chișinău), which included the dedication act of the Căpriana Monastery, published from a photograph preserved in the remarkable collection of the Russian historian P. Sevastianov. In the twenty-first century, the oldest Slavic document from this archival collection was published by Георги Р. Парпулов and Ралф Клеминсън, based on a photograph reproduced in the volume by Mihail Kovacev (Михаил Ковачев), and it has since appeared in two Romanian editions. At the same time, the historian Cyril Pavlikianov edited the Slavic documents, publishing them in 2018 – though, for the most part, not from the originals but from earlier editions. That volume included thirty-seven documents, comprising Slavic acts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as from the seventeenth century (1601-98), many of which were previously unpublished.

At the age of only nineteen, while still a student in Berlin, leading Romanian historian and politician Mihail Kogălniceanu (1817-1891) published three pioneering works: an outline survey of Romanian language and literature; a sketch of the customs, history and language of the Roma people; and the first volume of his Histoire de la Valachie, la Moldavie et des Vlaques trans-danubiens (1837), widely regarded as the first modern synthesis of Romanian history. This article presents a fourth, previously unnoticed work from the same year, namely a study of Romanian peasant marriage customs published in February 1837 in the “Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände” [Morning Paper for the Educated Classes]. This was Kogălniceanu’s second ever publication in any language. The German original is transcribed and a Romanian translation is provided. Kogălniceanu’s work is shown to be partially derivative of previous descriptions taken from the works of Dimitrie Cantemir and Damaschin Bojincă, but also original in its critical account of contemporary marriage ceremonies. The work’s genesis is placed in relation to Kogălniceanu’s friendship with the German novelist Willibald Alexis, dating from the summer of 1836, but also in the context of his known interest in folklore and popular culture, and of his broader conception of history, which extended beyond the narrowly political to encompass cultural, social, economic and religious life. Kogălniceanu’s text was then translated twice, in both cases without attribution: first into French in “Revue du Nord” (October 1837), and then into German in “Ost und West” (October 1840), probably from the French version, which also circulated in Russia. Kogălniceanu developed his view of rural marriage customs in his 1840 Romanian-language sketch Scene pitorești din obiceiurile poporului [Picturesque scenes from the customs of the people], which can now be understood as a revision of his earlier publication in accordance with newer trends within European Romanticism. This text is shown to have influenced the accounts of Moldavian marriage customs given by foreign writers such as Frenchman Jean Alexandre Vaillant and German Wilhelm von Kotzebue, who are known to have been in contact with Kogălniceanu. Scene pitorești in its turn benefitted from a French translation in 1854, hitherto misattributed to its translator, Ioan Voinescu II. This version likewise influenced several foreign writers, including Frenchman Abdolonyme Ubicini, and American author James O. Noyes, who reproduced a segment of it in Roumania (1857), the first book-length account of the country to be published in the USA. These new findings show how materials about Romanian popular culture circulated during this key period of the national revival, and how Kogălniceanu put them to use, including as an instrument of social criticism in the context of his views on the position of women in society.