This collective work aims to compare media (and in particular cultural press) in Francoist Spain and Communist Romania, placing the two opposing paradigms in a common approach with the intention of identifying shared patterns and intricate connections between them, but, at the same time, without ignoring their radical differences. This comparison is performed both explicitly, through several chapters focusing on the general methodological implications of such a comparison between Francoist Spain and Communist Romania in the development of totalitarian / dictatorial propagandistic systems; and implicitly, by offering the academic frame to a series of case studies from both regimes. The contributors to this volume - Spanish, Anglo-Saxon and Romanian scholars - approach several aspects of media in relation to politics, propaganda, historical or social aspects in the two regimes, based on their academic backgrounds: history, cultural studies, media and literature. The volume intends to suggest - through its collection of general, comparative or analytic chapters, as well as through a new approach on two political and cultural phenomena otherwise studied as opposing paradigms - the need for a larger debate on the potential of the approach to these phenomena in a common framework.
About the Author: Andrada Fatu-Tutoveanu, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher, and holds a PhD (2009) from Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She is currently conducting a research project on identity within Romanian media, and is also a member of the international research project EXPERT at P. J. Safarik University, Kosice, Slovakia, where she gives regular lectures. In 2011, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Spain. Her academic work and teaching covers cultural studies, comparative literature, gender studies and cultural journalism. Ruben Jarazo Alvarez, PhD, is currently a Lecturer at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. He has previously worked at the University of A Coruna, Spain; the National University of Ireland, Galway; and as a Visiting Lecturer at Dublin City University, Ireland; the University of the Arts London, United Kingdom; and New York University, United States. He has been investigating the influence of Anglophone and Galician literatures, as well as the economic, cultural and identity implications of these interactions, and has recently been working on areas such as cultural industry / production, Anglo-Irish theatre in the XVIII and XIX centuries, Celtic cultures, William Shakespeare and censorship, translation studies and minority languages, as well as peripheral representations in Western culture, amongst other issues. He is editor of the academic journals in cultural studies, Garoza (2001-present day) and Oceanide (2009-present day).