~ By Jefferson Beavers, Communication Specialist, Department of English
Dr. Emiliano Treré, a senior lecturer in media ecologies and social transformation at Cardiff University in Wales, will deliver a keynote address entitled “Taming the Sublime: The Ambivalent Political Implications of Technological Visions” as part of the fourth annual Students of English Studies Association symposium on Dec. 10 and 11. This year’s event is virtual.
Dr. Honora Chapman, the interim dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, will deliver the symposium’s opening remarks on Dec. 10 to set the tone of the two-day event’s theme, “Going Beyond: The Sublime, Subtexts and Subversions.”
Student panel presentations will be from 10:30 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 10, and from 1 to 6 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 11. Chapman speaks at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 10. Treré speaks at 10 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 11. All sessions will be conducted online via Zoom.
The symposium is free and open to the community. Pre-registration to each session is required.
Treré is an associate professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University in Wales. Fluent in English, Spanish and Italian, he’s a widely cited author, globally recognized as a bridge between Western and Latin American schools of thought, working at the intersection between communication, social movements, critical data and disconnection studies.
He is a member of the Data Justice Lab and the co-principal investigator of the project “Towards Democratic Auditing: Civic Participation in the Scoring Society,” funded by the Open Society Foundations. He has published more than 50 articles in five languages in peer-reviewed publications. Treré’s latest book, “Hybrid Media Activism,” published by Routledge in 2019, won the Outstanding Book Award of the Activism, Communication and Social Justice Interest Group of the International Communication Association.
His publications also include the co-edited collection “Citizen Media and Practice,” also published by Routledge in 2019, as well as six co-edited special issues. Treré is currently co-editing a forthcoming special issue of the journal Palabra Clave on “Latin American perspectives on datafication and artificial intelligence,” as well as the forthcoming book “Covid-19 from the Margins: Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society” for the Theory on Demand Series of the Institute of Network Cultures.
Treré co-founded the “Big Data from the South” Initiative, and he’s the co-editor of the multilingual blog “Covid-19 from the margins,” the vice-chair of the “Communication and Democracy” section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), and the co-director of the Data Justice Book Series published by SAGE. His work has informed the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and he is often invited to speak on the challenges, the implications and the myths of digital activism and data agency.
The symposium’s full schedule will include more than 20 graduate and undergraduate student presentations, on a diverse range of topics:
- Rhetorical Re-imaginings
- Horrifying Realities: The Monstrous and the Self
- Trauma, Drama and Marx in the 20th Century
- Latinx Identities
- Claiming and Re-claiming Identities
- Transformative Experiences in the Middle Ages
- Parallels and Violences: Genders Historical and Present
The Students of English Studies Association, or SESA, is a student organization in its fourth year. Its mission is to offer students in the humanities a chance to explore graduate opportunities in English Studies. Organizers envision the symposium as a space for the community to enter into the world of academic conferences, which provides students with professional opportunities to present and talk about their scholarly work.
For more information, contact SESA President Alexander Flores.
The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State 