There are a number of different models of universal computation that were formulated in the 1930s or soon afterward and can all be proven to be equivalent in power. In CS courses in the U.S., people might learn about more than one of these and also prove that they're equivalent. But only the one with the tape and symbols is referred to as a "Turing machine" here; the other ones might be called "computation models", "computation formalisms", or something similar.
I don't think that the string-rewriting model is as commonly taught over here, although I'm sure it's alluded to in discussions of rewriting in formal grammars
You are right.
In Romania we also prove that different computational models are equivalent (Turing machine, lambda calculus, Markov machine, logic programming)
I can't remember if it specifically shows such a proof in there, but you might look at courseware for automata theory and such.
In general, from what I remember, you would use a general technique called "reduction", where you try to make two problems equivalent, "reducing" solving one to the problem of solving the other one, kind of mapping one problem on to another, so that solving one solves them both. So, you reduce running an arbitrary Turing machine, to say, lambda calculus, almost like you write a "compiler" from a Turing machine with lambda calculus as the target language. Then, you reduce computing in lambda calculus to a Turing machine. So, then you know that each can compute what the other computes, and they can only compute the same things. If you only did one half, one reduction, you would only know, say, that a Turing machine could do everything you could do in lambda calculus, but it would leave the possibility that the Turing machine could compute things lambda calculus can't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_algorithm
There are a number of different models of universal computation that were formulated in the 1930s or soon afterward and can all be proven to be equivalent in power. In CS courses in the U.S., people might learn about more than one of these and also prove that they're equivalent. But only the one with the tape and symbols is referred to as a "Turing machine" here; the other ones might be called "computation models", "computation formalisms", or something similar.
I don't think that the string-rewriting model is as commonly taught over here, although I'm sure it's alluded to in discussions of rewriting in formal grammars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewriting
Interestingly, the Markov who devised this model of computation is apparently the son of the Markov who studied Markov chains and Markov processes.