Mariana Neţ, Fulbright Alumna and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest, has published a comparative study of transatlantic urban imaginaries, titled Once Upon Two Cities. A Parallel Between New York City and Bucharest by 1900. This book shows how New York City and Bucharest appealed to people’s senses and how this feeling was mediated by guidebooks, cookbooks, conduct manuals, postcards, films, and music. It explains what the two cities were considered to look like. It shows how men and women were taught to behave and what they must have eaten. It describes those few icons and “scores” which were supposed to appeal, first and foremost, to the middle class. It is a book about images: word images, fictional images, visual images, auditory images. It deals with (pre)conceptions, lifestyles and with two cities in search of their identities. In all these respects, by the year 1900, the world metropolis and the small European capital city could justifiably be compared.

Mariana Neţ was a visiting scholar at New York University in the academic year 2006-2007 and has lectured in many universities in Europe and the United States.