21 Mar The Janovics Center Award Winners Announcement

The Janovics Center Award for Outstanding Humanities Research in Transnational Film and Theatre Studies is yearly awarded to publications that advance transnational research in the fields of film and theatre studies and employ innovative methods in the humanities. The Jury awarding these works was composed of Professors Michael Gott, University of Cincinnati, Mariana Liz, University of Lisbon, and Constantin Parvulescu, Babes-Bolyai University (for film studies), and Liviu Dospinescu, Laval University Quebec, Péter P. Müller University of Pécs, and Miruna Runcan, Babes-Bolyai University (for theatre studies), decided to offer the following awards:

This year’s BEST BOOK award (monograph or collection) was offered to Rachel S. Harris and Dan Chyutin (eds), Casting a Giant Shadow: The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema, Indiana University Press, 2021. The Jury commended the collection’s innovative, transnational approach to the study of a national cinema, the overall quality of its chapters and introduction, its comprehensive design, and the relevance of its intervention in the historiography of Israeli cinema.

This year’s BEST ARTICLE award was offered to Andrew Higson, “The Resilience of Popular National Cinemas in Europe (part one and two), Transnational Screens, 12:3, 2021, 199-219, 220-232. The Jury appreciated the extent, thoroughness, and relevance of the presented research, its interdisciplinary approach, and the way the work tackles major concepts in contemporary film studies, delivers a convincing defense of the concept of national cinema, and presents its findings in a clear and persuasive prose.

The Jury decided to offer a SPECIAL MENTION to Andrea Virginás, Film Genres in Hungarian and Romanian Cinema: History, Theory, and Reception, Lexington Books. 2021. The Jury recognized the ambitious objectives of the monograph, its contribution to understanding genre history, its comparative transnational method, and its insightful understanding of the cultural and industrial dynamics of small European film cultures.

The Janovics Center congratulates the authors for their achievements and will organize book presentations and talks related to their work. Further details on the award and related events are available on the Center’s website, under News and Events.

Cluj-Napoca, March 21, 2022.                                                                      Constantin Pârvulescu and Miruna Runcan