Conferences
Adriana Babeti: Amazons for Everyone
Adriana Babeți will be holding the conference titled Amazons for Everyone on Sunday, the 2nd of March, at 11:00 a.m. The price of a ticket is 16 lei.
About the Conference
A conference on the subject of amazons cannot betray the spirit of the heroines who are presented to the audience. Hence, the conference was conceived as a battle, at the end of which both the topic and the audience need to be conquered. The book upon which this conference is based, titled Amazons: A Story and recently published at Polirom Publishing House, was designed in the same vein.
Having this double target before her, Ms. Babeți will gradually besiege the most important themes regarding the story of the amazons. The amazonic myth, created by the ancient Greeks, will be encircled concentrically: starting with the origin of their name, moving on to their genealogy (who were their ancestors and protectors, what was the ancestry of the female fighters) and continuing with the lands bordering myth and reality where they supposedly lived.
The notion of amazonstyle, describing their manner, their way of fighting, of loving and of dying, will be defined likewise. A veritable amazonsaga will be outlined, based on all of their actions (wars, hand-to-hand combat both on dry land and on sea, physical endurance trials, horseback riding and hunting). A detailed description of their physical aspect, their weaponry, their clothing, their hairstyle and even their diet will be provided. Last, but not least, a collection of the love and death stories of these strange women will be recounted.
How will the amazons emerge from such a siege? Will they become stronger or will they be completely exhausted? Even if the last part of the conference will remain under the sign of a retreat, it will nevertheless not represent a defeat. After all, any retreat is just another way of fighting. At the end of the conference, when the question Amazons: A Story? will be raised, there will be no sign of surrender, but, on the contrary, the beginning of a new battle.
About Ms. Adriana Babeți
She is a professor at the West University of Timişoara, where she teaches comparative literature. She is also an editor for Horizon magazine. She curated the volumes In Favour of a Theory of the Text: A „Tel Quel" Anthology (1980) and Roland Barthes - The Novel on Writing (1987) together with Ms. Delia Şepeţean-Vasiliu. She coordinated, together with Mr. Cornel Ungureanu, the anthologies Central Europe: Neuroses, Dilemmas, Utopias (Polirom Publishing House, 1997) and Central Europe: Memory, Paradise, Apocalipse (Polirom Publishing House, 1998). She also selected and translated the texts for the Barbey d'Aurevilly anthology, titled Dandyism (Polirom Publishing House, 1st edition, 1995; 2nd revised edition, 2013). She published the following volumes: Lost Battles: Dimitrie Cantemir, Reading Strategies (1997, The Writers' Union of Romania Award for criticism and literary history), The Dilemmas of Central Europe (1998), Arachne and the Web (2002), Dandyism: A History (Polirom Publishing House, 2004; The Writers' Union of Romania Award for criticism and literary history, the Romanian Association of General and Comparative Literature Award), Last Soufflé in Paris: 69 Culinary Recipes (Polirom Publishing House, 2006), The Banat Region: An Eldorado in Confines (coord., Cultures d'Europe Centrale, CIRCE, Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne, 2007), Prozac: 101 Pills for Happiness (Polirom Publishing House, 2009) and The Woman in Red (together with Mr. Mircea Mihăieş and Mr. Mircea Nedelciu, 1990, 1997, 1998; Polirom Publishing House, 2003, 2008, 2011; The Writers' Union of Romania Award for novel).
Translated by: Diana-Crezante Raicev
MTTLC, The University of Bucharest
