By Joshua Sagouspe, M.A. English graduate student
Author, translator, and University of Virginia associate professor Carmen Lamas will deliver the keynote address for Fresno State’s eighth annual Students of English Studies Association symposium on December 12 and 13. The theme for this year’s SESA symposium is “Translations.”
Lamas’ keynote, titled “Nineteenth-Century Latinx Pedagogues: Translation as Cultural and Political Intervention,” is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12, inside the Fresno State Library (LIB 3212). Admission is free and open to the community. Parking costs $5 in recommended lot P1.
An associate professor of English and American Studies at the University of Virginia, Lamas wrote the award-winning book “The Latino Continuum and the Nineteenth Century Americas: Literature, Translation and Historiography,” published by Oxford University Press in 2021. The book won the 2022 Latin American Studies Association Latinx Studies Section Book Award and the 2023 MLA Book Prize in Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies.
Recognized by scholars as “a field-defining tour de force,” the book illuminates how literary, cultural, political and aesthetic formations are deeply entangled across national borders, providing a new generation of scholars with the language to critique the power of disciplines.
Lamas co-founded the Latinx Studies Association, an academic organization that brings together scholars, students, and activists in the study of Latinx concerns. She co-founded and is co-editing the new open-access journal “Pasados: Recovering Histories, Imagining Latinidad,” and she is the co-editor with Miguel Valladares-Llata of the book series “Biblioteca Trasatlántica,” published by Calambur Editorial of Barcelona, Spain. Her research is widely published.
In addition to Lamas’ keynote address, this year’s symposium — scheduled for 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 13, inside the Fresno State Library (LIB 3212) — will feature seven panel sessions showcasing 19 undergraduate and graduate student scholars. The panels will include:
- Fables, Boars and Seafarers: Translating Beauty;
- Performing Patriarchy: Feminism in Gendered Bodies;
- Translating Transgression: Border Bashes, Chicana Detectives, and The Sex Worker’s Daughter;
- Anthropocene in Trans-Formation: Earthly Dwellings and the Sublime in Space/Place;
- Many Men“s”: Machines, Incels and Hannibal Lecter;
- Contrasting Morality: Shifting Spirits and Dark Desire;
- Radical Ed: Teaching Against the Text.
The symposium will include opening remarks from Honora Chapman, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities; John Beynon, chair of the Department of English; and Madison Johansson and Joseph LeForge, co-presidents of SESA. The symposium will also feature a closing roundtable discussion with four English Department alumni talking about career opportunities after graduation for English majors.
Fresno State’s Students of English Studies Association is a student organization in its eighth year. SESA’s mission is to offer students in the humanities a chance to explore graduate-level opportunities in the topic of English Studies. The organizers envision the symposium as a space for the community to enter into the realm of academic conferences by providing students with opportunities to professionally present and discuss their scholarly research.
For more information, contact SESA co-presidents Madison Johansson and Joseph LeForge at sesa.fresno@gmail.com or call 559.278.1569.
English Department communication specialist Jefferson Beavers contributed to this report.
The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State 