20 Facts About Ovidiu Pecican

Ovidiu Coriolan Pecican was born on January 8,1959 and is a Romanian historian, essayist, novelist, short-story writer, literary critic, poet, playwright, and journalist of partly Serbian origin.

Ovidiu Pecican is especially known for his political writings on disputed issues such as regional autonomy for Transylvania, and for his co-authorship of a controversial history textbook for 11th and 12th grade high-school students.

Ovidiu Pecican has written works of science fiction, mainstream literature and cultural history studies.

Between 1985 and 1990, Ovidiu Pecican worked as a high school teacher of history in Lipova, Arad County; between 1991 and 1994, he was a researcher for the UBB's Center for Transylvanian Studies, before becoming a Lecturer at the UBB.

In 1994, Ovidiu Pecican published a book of interviews with novelist Nicolae Breban.

Ovidiu Pecican is a Professor and was Chancellor at the Babes-Bolyai University Faculty of European Studies and served on the staff of the UBB's "The European Idea" Foundation for European Studies as its first manager.

Ovidiu Pecican has been the recipient of TEMPUS grants from the University of Sussex, Utrecht University, the University of Munster, the University of Milan, and the INALCO, as well as receiving grants from the Central European University, Michigan State University and a DAAD grant from the University of Munster.

Ovidiu Pecican is a coordinator of the Other Europes series for the foundation's publishing house, EFES, and, between 2001 and 2005, he headed another publishing house, founded by the Desire Foundation.

Ovidiu Pecican was head of the Post-Totalitarian Studies, an office he shared with Emil Boc.

Ovidiu Pecican has edited Romanian-language versions of, among others, works by Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Robert de Clari, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, and Yves Ternon.

Ovidiu Pecican identified most of these concerns with support for nationalist tenets, and argued they were unscientific.

In late October 2005, the journalist Melania Mandas Vergu published an article in Gandul on the issue of Ovidiu Pecican's alleged candidature for government office in Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu's Justice and Truth cabinet.

Also in 2005, Ovidiu Pecican was among the group of intellectuals who reacted to the controversial views held by the exiled writer Paul Goma on issues involving Bessarabia and World War II Romanian history.

Ovidiu Pecican's polemics include the one against the new treatise on Romanian history, published by the Romanian Academy beginning 2002.

Ovidiu Pecican uncovered the prehistory of various enigmatic texts, reconstituting both lost texts and contexts, as well as the image of a whole written culture expressing the choices made by medieval Romanians in the Balkans and the territory between Danube and the Carpathians.

The volume raised debates between the author and historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, who claimed that Ovidiu Pecican's views favored the Hungarians.

The debate on regionalism prompted Ovidiu Pecican to write a new book on the regional political forms before and after the founding of the Danubian Principalities, under the title of Originile istorice ale regionalismului romanesc.

Some other volumes written by Ovidiu Pecican reflect his questioning of official versions provided for the past.

Ovidiu Pecican is interested in how Eastern European culture developed in contact with the Western culture during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Nine years later, Ovidiu Pecican published a third novel, Imberia, which depicts the daily dilemmas a young intellectual has to face in post-communist Romania during the transition period.