By Madison Johansson, M.A. English graduate student
Author, translator, and Stanford University professor Roanne L. Kantor will deliver the keynote address for Fresno State’s seventh annual Students of English Studies Association symposium on December 7 and 8. This year’s symposium theme is “Navigating the Environment: Adapting, Critiquing, and Reconstructing Our Surroundings.”
Kantor’s keynote, titled “The Countershelf: How Citation Creates Connection Across Literary Cultures,” is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 7 inside the Fresno State Library (LIB 2206). Admission is free and open to the community, with a reception to follow. Parking costs $5 in recommended lot P1. An online broadcast of the keynote will also be available on Zoom.
A professor of English at Stanford, Kantor is an award-winning author and translator whose book, “South Asian Writers, Latin American Literature, and the Rise of Global English,” was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press. Kantor holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has also taught at Harvard University, Boston University, Brandeis, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Kantor’s achievements include receiving the American Comparative Literature First Book Subvention Prize and the Susan Sontag Prize for translation. Her research interests involve the relationship between Global Anglophone literature and other literary traditions of the Global South, medical humanities, contemporary, postcolonial, and 20th and 21st Century literatures.
In addition to Kantor’s appearance on campus, this year’s symposium — scheduled from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 7, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 8, inside the library (LIB 2206) — will feature eight panel sessions showcasing more than 25 undergraduate and graduate student scholars. Panel presentations include:
- Exploring the Fronteras Humanas of Identity and Self;
- (Re)Engaging Spaces of Understanding;
- Warrior Women in Times of Change;
- Dissecting Gothic Structures and Spaces;
- Drugs, Crime, and Memoirs;
- Horror and the Psychoanalytic Space;
- Gender in Flux: Stoic Men and the Madonna-Whore;
- Classroom Environment: Tensions in Educational Accessibility and Literacy.
The symposium will include opening remarks from Honora Chapman, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities; Luis Granados Torres, president of SESA; and William Arcé, associate professor of English.
Restarted in 2017, Fresno State’s Students of English Studies Association, or SESA, is a student organization whose 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, providing students with professional opportunities to present and discuss their scholarly research.
For more information, contact SESA President Luis Granados Torres and Vice President Joseph LeForge at sesa.fresno@gmail.com or 559.278.1569.
English Department communication specialist Jefferson Beavers contributed to this report.
The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State 