The Department of English Language and Literature is one
of the largest and most important ones in this field in Romania. Now its
teaching staff includes 20 current members who cover the most important
fields of English and American studies and who bring their active
contribution not only in the teaching areas, but also for the
improvement of specialist research and translation work through valuable
publications and participation to national and international events.
Short history
The beginnings of the Department of English Language
and Literature are connected with the 1919 re-establishing of the
“Regele Ferdinand” University, at which time it started as an English
Lectureship within the premises of the then Faculty of Letters and
Philosophy. Professor Petre Grimm, an outstanding scholar of national
and international renown, was then elected head of department. Even
though he had a Master of Arts in German, Professor Petre Grimm took up
teaching English and channelled his personal efforts towards obtaining
scholarships and academic positions for his most eminent students.
Besides the teaching activities, he was also preoccupied with the
theoretical and practical aspects of translating from Romanian into
English. After the period of the Vienna Diktat, when the University of
Cluj found temporary refuge in Sibiu, Professor Mihail Bogdan, former
assistant to Petre Grimm, was elected head of department in 1945. During
the communist regime, in the 1950's, the department was dissolved, the
only one which remained complete being the one at the University of
Bucharest. At Cluj, as part of the two universities functioning at that
time, "Victor Babeş" and "Bolyai Janos", which had resulted from the
division of the old University of Cluj, there existed a small English
department in each. After the re-unification of the two universities in
a unitary institution called the "Babeş-Bolyai" University, English did
not represent a separate department, but was included in the Department
of Germanic Languages. During this time, an entire gallery of
outstanding academics made a name for themselves, among which we can
mention Margareta Quittner, Eva Semlyen, Sinka Zoltan. The first heads
of department were professors of German, until Mihai Bogdan was
re-elected head of department in 1959. Professor Mihai Bogdan was one of
the most appreciated English scholars after WW2, being an expert in
phonetics and phonology, literary studies, such as those on Shakespeare,
Wilde and Shaw, and also an exquisite translator from the Romanian of
the works of Blaga and Rebreanu and from English into Romanian of the
works of Herbert Smith, Roy MacGregor Hastie and G. B. Shaw. In his
quality as head of department he brought his valuable contribution to
the quantitative and qualitative development of the department, which
thus became the second in importance after the one in Bucharest. The
1960's, 1970's and 1980's were a period of time during which, despite
the numerous difficulties, most of which ideological in nature, the
teaching of English and other foreign languages gained momentum,
benefiting from the presence of visiting scholars from Great Britain and
the USA, as well as from the creation of opportunities for Romanian
teachers to study abroad. Within the department an independent library
was opened, which offered to its readers American books and
publications. In this period, noteworthy heads of department were
professors Sever Trif and Ileana Galea. After 1990, English became one
of the most popular foreign languages, which led to the establishing of
a large number of English departments in Romania, the one in Cluj being
chaired by professor Virgil Stanciu and, at present, by professor Mihai
Zdrenghea, keeping its status as one of the most important in the
country.
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International relations and exchange programmes
University of Reno, Nevada (USA)
Queen's University, Belfast (UK, Northern
Ireland)
University College, Dublin (Ireland)
University College, London (UK)
Universitaet Salzburg (Austria)
University of Odense (Denmark)
University of Veszprém (Hungary)
University of Pecs (Hungary)
Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice
(Slovakia)
Roskilde
University (Denmark)
Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona (Spain)
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