Sorin Alexandrescu

Sorin Alexandrescu He graduated from the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest in 1959, subsequently becoming an assistant professor (1963) and associate professor (1966) in the Department of Comparative Literature. He earned his doctorate in 1971 with a dissertation on Faulkner. In 1969, he moved to the University of Amsterdam, where he became an associate professor (1976) and professor (1980) of Romanian literature and semiotics. He is the founder of the journal International Journal of Romanian Studies and the International Association of Romanian Studies; and in the field of semiotics, the Dutch Association for Semiotics and the Research Institute of the University of Amsterdam for semiotics, literary theory, philosophy, and art theory (ISELK), a permanent member of A.J. Greimas’s Semiotic Research Group in Paris, as well as of the advisory committee of the International Association for Semiotics. He was a co-organizer of two major exhibitions of Romanian art: Heaven and Earth. Imaginary Worlds (Maastricht, 1991) and Figurative Art: The Early and Late 20th Century in Romania (Amstelveen, 1998).

He became involved in public campaigns against the communist dictatorship, founding in 1988, in Amsterdam, alongside prominent politicians and journalists, the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania (Roemenië Comité) and the publication Roemenië Bulletin, frequently analyzing the situation in Romania in NRC Handelsblad and Oost Europa Verkenningen (Amsterdam), as well as on Dutch radio and television, and organizing, through the Roemenië Comité, numerous public protest demonstrations in Amsterdam and The Hague. He arrived in Bucharest with a team of Dutch journalists three days after the Revolution, to provide “live” reports, as well as to assist in the restoration of the Central University Library. He subsequently taught university courses in Bucharest, Constanța, and Iași. Between 1998 and 2000, he served as an advisor on culture and education to President Emil Constantinescu.

In 2002, now a professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, he returned as an associate professor at the University of Bucharest and, together with Laura Mesina and other colleagues, founded the Center of Excellence in Image Studies (CESI), which offers master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral programs, where he continues to work today.

He has published numerous books, including William Faulkner (Publishing House for World Literature, 1969), Poetics and Stylistics (Univers, 1972), Character logic (Mame, 1974), Richard Rorty (Kok Agora, 1995), Romania. Stories of Our Time – Romania. Contemporary Stories (publisher: Meulenhoff, 1988), Figurative Art: The Beginning and End of the 20th Century in Romania (Amstelveen, Cobra Museum, 1998), The Romanian Paradox (Univers, 1998), Modernity in the East: 13 Insights into Romanian Literature (Paralela 45, 1999), Looking back, modernity (Univers, 1999), Identity in Crisis (Univers, 2000), Mircea Eliade, from Portugal (Humanitas, 2006), The Uncertain World of Everyday Life (Polirom, 2021), as well as hundreds of articles and studies, such as those in the volumes edited by A.J. Greimas (Larousse, 1973, and Hachette, 1979) and by H. Parret (de Gruyter, 1983).

He received the Romanian Writers’ Union Award for literary criticism and history in 1969 (for *William Faulkner*) and 1998 (for *The Romanian Paradox*), the Social Dialogue Group Award for promoting an accurate image of Romania abroad and for his support of Romanian civil society (1998), the Order of Orange-Nassau in the rank of Officer, awarded by the Queen of the Netherlands (2002), the Order of the Crown of Romania in the rank of Knight, awarded by the Royal House of Romania (2017), and the “9th Cantemir Prize,” an award presented during the Royal Colloquiums (2022), under the High Patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Radu of Romania.

Since 2022, he has been an Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy.