Lorelei CARAMAN (Lect. dr.)

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Lorelei CARAMAN (Lect. dr.)

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Lorelei Caraman is a Lecturer in the Department of English at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași. She holds a BA and an MA in Cultural Studies and earned her PhD with a specialization in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic criticism. Her doctoral research established the foundation for her current deconstructive approach to literary theory, specifically interrogating the paradoxical nature of the literary object: the way it simultaneously invites psychoanalytic interpretation, while inherently resisting totalization or a definitive "closing" of meaning. Rather than using psychoanalysis as a diagnostic tool, she focuses on the "transferential" space of the text to explore the dialectics of the analytical dyad and the ways in which literature both solicits and subverts the psychoanalytic gaze. Another central element of her scholarship is a longstanding transdisciplinary collaboration with Sânziana Caraman from the Department of Mathematics at "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iași. This collaboration explores the shared aesthetic foundations of poetry and mathematics, investigating the "isomorphism" between mathematical beauty and poetic form. Moving beyond purely formal analysis, this research explores the general aesthetics of poetry through a mathematical lens and the aesthetics of mathematics through a poetic lens, focusing specifically on the creative experience of reading and the architecture of the metaphor as a bridge between the two disciplines.

Teaching and Philosophy

She teaches a range of courses at both the B.A. and M.A. levels, including Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theories, Modernism (with a focus on modernist poetry), Critical Perspectives on Modernist Drama, Critical Media Studies, and the Cultural History of Dissent in the United States.

Her teaching philosophy is deeply rooted in the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the educational vision of Sir Ken Robinson, centering on the liberatory function of education. She views the lecture hall and the seminar room as sites for "conscientization" and the cultivation of divergent thinking, encouraging students to move beyond standardized responses toward genuine creativity and social agency. This student-oriented approach is built on a foundation of empathy, respect, and freedom, treating education as a collaborative act of discovery. To support this environment, she employs humor as a strategic pedagogical tool to dismantle traditional hierarchies, ease the engagement with challenging theoretical concepts, and foster an inclusive, resilient learning community where critical and creative capacities can flourish.

Primary research areas

Aesthetics of Poetry and Mathematics: Transdisciplinary collaboration exploring formal symmetries, shared creative structures, and the experience of reading.
Deconstructive Psychoanalysis: Investigating the limits of interpretation and the "invitation and resistance" of the literary text.
Cultural & Literary Theory: Utilizing a foundation in Cultural Studies to analyze literature and media institutions.
Psychoanalysis, Posthumanism and Politics: Using psychoanalysis, post humanist and political philosophy to examine the interior psychodynamics at the root of exterior collective political phenomena.

Academic portfolios

Teaching

Theses & dissertation supervision

Freudian Psychoanalysis & Psychoanalytic Criticism
Literature and politics
Gender and Queer Studies
Poetry and poetics
Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Approaches to Literature and Culture
Poststructuralism and Deconstruction
Media Studies

Contact regarding thesis and dissertation advising should be established as early as possible, BEFORE the final year, ideally 3 semesters before the due defense date.

International exchanges

Books

Book chapters

Articles and studies

Caraman, S., & Caraman, L. (2025). White Horses in the Sky: or The Magical Place Where Topology Meets Poetry. Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, 15(1), 277-296.

Caraman, S., & Caraman, L. (2018). Brouwer's fixed point theorem and the madeleine moment. Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 12(4), 207-224.

Postolea S, Caraman L. Between Anthropocentrism and Anthropomorphism: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Animal Comparisons in Shakespeare’s Plays. Linguaculture. 2017 Dec 20;8(2):119-32.

“Literature and Psychoanalysis: Whose Madness is it anyway?” Acta Iassyensia Comparationis no. 17 (1/2016): 31-36.

“Poe’s Strategies of Seduction: Transference, Incongruity and the Undecidability of Meaning.” American and British Studies Annual, vol.8 (2015): 22-31.

“The Urge to Tell vs. the Need to Conceal: Confession as Narrative Desire in Poe’s ‘The Black Cat,’ ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Imp of the Perverse’.” American and British Studies Annual, vol.7 (2014): 98-108.

“Poe’s ‘The Gold-Bug’: from the Reading of Madness to the Madness of its Readings.” Philologica Jassyensia 1.19 (2014): 131-138.

“The Psychoanalytic Concept of Transference: Its Applications in Literary and Translation Studies. Transferential Models of Reading.” Studies in Science and Culture, vol. 3 (2013): 127-135

“Unlocking the Text within the Text: Functions of the Act of Reading in Poe’s ‘The Sphinx’ and ‘The Oval Portrait’.” Scientific Bulletin, A Series, Philology Fascicle XXII (2013): 129-137.

“From the Text-as-Symptom to the Critic-as-Analysand: New Approaches in Psychoanalytic Criticism.” Annals of Ovidius University Constanta – Philology 24.1 (2013): 86-93.

“Between Analyst and Analysand: Poe and the Psychoanalytic Critic. Revisiting “The Purloined Letter.” East-West Cultural Passage vol.2 (2012): 21-32.

Conference papers

Caraman, S., & Caraman, L. (2020). Metaphors at the Crossing of Mathematics and the Literary Arts. In Bridges conference proceedings (pp. 497-500).

CARAMAN, S., & CARAMAN, L. (2022) Autour d’un théorème de Brouwer et à travers une poésie de Baudelaire. Autour et a travers, Actes du symposium ”Autour et a travers” CRU TUIASI (Dîrțu, E. and Baciu, I. coord.), Iași: Editura Politehnium, ISBN 978-973-621-508- 7

“Migrating Otherness: Posthumanism and the Rise of Human-Animal Studies.” PHSS, 3rd ed.: Figures of Migration, 2016.

“Reading Effects as Determinants of Plot in Poe’s ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’ and ‘The Angel of the Odd.’ PHSS, 2nd ed.: From Manuscript to E-Book, 2015.

“Poe’s ‘The Gold-Bug’: from the Reading of ‘madness’ to the Madness of its Readings”. PHSS 1^st.ed. 2014.

International conferences abroad

Other responsibilities

Cadre didactice