Ioan Pop Curseu

Ioan Pop-Curşeu is a professor at the Faculty of Theatre and Film of UBB. He defended his first doctoral thesis at the University of Geneva in 2007 (“From the Hyperbolic Man to the Impossible Text: Theatricality, Theatre(s), Drafts of Plays in Baudelaire”) and the second at Babeş-Bolyai University in 2011 (“Magic and Witchcraft in Romanian Culture”). In 2015, he defended his habilitation thesis in the field of Cinematography and Media, and in 2016 he became a member of the European Academy, section: Film, Media and Visual Studies. His research interests include film aesthetics, art criticism, and image theory, as well as the art and culture of the 19th century and modernity, and anthropological aspects of magic and witchcraft.

He has published several books: “The Left Doesn’t Know What the Right is Doing. Two Essays on the Floundering of Critical Thinking” (2004), “Baudelaire, Plural” (2008), “Vasile Bologa (1859-1944), Monographic Study” (2010), “Magic and Witchcraft in Romanian Culture. History, Literature, Mentalities” (2013), “Manual of Aesthetics” (2014), “The Iconography of Witchcraft in Romanian Religious Art. Essay on Visual Anthropology” (2020, in collaboration with Ștefana Pop-Curșeu). He has also published numerous articles, especially in the field of film studies, as well as essays on literary criticism or anthropology.

He coordinates the Cinemag collection (Tact Publishing House) and the CineMedia manual collection (Cluj University Press). Since 2013, he has been the president of the jury at the ClujShorts International Short Film Festival.