Speaker Bios
Anthony Abuan (he/him) is a graduate student in the English Literature M.A. Program at San Francisco State, where he is also pursuing a Certificate in the Teaching of Composition. In Spring 2020, he received degrees in English Literature and Modern Jewish Studies from San Francisco State. Anthony was the 2020 recipient of the Cunningham Scholarship, the 2018 recipient of the Linda Mazursky Kurtz Scholarship; he was also a 2018-19 University Research Fellow at the JFCS Holocaust Center in San Francisco. Anthony’s work ranges from narratives of diaspora, persecution, and exile to Kabbalistic and Jewish Mystical traditions in literature. Anthony focuses on English Literature of the 19th Century with a profound love of George Eliot’s works. Currently, he is working on his thesis which shall focus on the poetics of the ghost story.
Aidan Alberts is a first year Master of Arts in Literature student. Aidan is interested in studying science fiction and its implications for our world. Aidan graduated from UC Santa Cruz Spring of 2022 with a B.S. in Earth Science. You can find Aidan backpacking in the winter and skiing in the summer.
Isaac Arellano is a student in the MA in English Literatures program at San Francisco State University.
Ilana Baer is a Masters Candidate in the English Composition Program at SF State. She has worked as an ELL instructor at Language Pacifica for 4 years. She earned her BAs in English and Spanish from Westmont College in 2018. Her time as a writing center tutor there drew her into the lively world of writing center studies. She enjoys reading about how writing centers’ efforts to strengthen the connection between students, teachers, and tutors.
Gurleen Babra is Graduate student pursuing her Masters in Literature at the Department of English at SF State. She is also a middle school teacher of English and Punjabi at The New Village School in Sausalito. Gurleen did her Masters and M.Phil. in English from Panjab University, India. Her research interest revolves around critical race theory, ethnic studies, and biopolitics. Her M.Phil. Dissertation was titled, “Revisiting Foucauldian Biopolitics: Roberto Esposito’s Concept of Immunization in Selected Dystopic Fiction.’ Her scholarly work has appeared in Contemporary Literature in English: Recent Perspectives (2018), Trends and Issues in Contemporary Literature (2016), New Horizons: A Multidisciplinary Research Journal (Volumes: XV and XIII).
Shawn Calhoun is completing his final semester of coursework as a blended Literatures student in the new SF State Scholars program. Some of his academic interests include Modernist studies, the role of readership, and the limits of critique. He is working on his MA thesis project which examines the act of reading as a composition of the self.
Shane Downing is currently a student teacher in Contra Costa College’s ESL Department, where he’s developing skills around integrated grammar and pronunciation instruction. Shane received his B.S. in Environmental Science from Allegheny College. After serving in the Peace Corps (Cameroon, 2011-2013), Shane moved to San Francisco to become a writer. Since then, he’s enjoyed success as a journalist, a copywriter, and a children’s author. As an action researcher, Shane’s interests include embodied pronunciation and contextually responsive problematizing. After he receives his master’s degree in TESOL from San Francisco State University, Shane’s goal is to teach at a local community college.
Tyrone Ellingberg is a student in the MA in English Literatures program at San Francisco State University.
Veronica Jardeleza is a student in the MA in English Literatures program at San Francisco State University.
Rebecca Kim is an MA Literatures student at San Francisco State University, where she has completed the Certificate in the Teaching of Composition. Her research interests are in twentieth and twenty-first century women's literature, focusing on representations of space, grief, and gender. She is currently working on her MA thesis on space, community, and belonging in Toni Morrison's Paradise
Padmatso Ledik is completing her M.A. in English with a concentration in TESOL. She earned her B.A. in Chinese Language with a minor in Pacific Asian Studies at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Padma has been a tutor at SFSU's Tutoring and Academic Support Center (TASC), helping students with reading, writing, and study skills. She currently works as a reception coordinator at UC Berkeley. As a multilingual speaker of English, Mandarin, and Tibetan, she is interested in second language acquisition, willingness to communicate, and motivational factors that play a role in language development. After graduating from SFSU, Padma hopes to continue working in higher education.
Lisa Ludden Perry holds an MFA in Poetry from Saint Mary’s College of California and is a student in the MA Literatures program at San Francisco State University. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Palebound (Flutter Press, 2017), and recent poems have appeared in Colorado Review. Her current research is focused on tracking womb language in Paradise Lost.
Maya Patterson-Burch is working towards completing her MA in English with a Concentration in TESOL. She earned her BA in Linguistic Anthropology with a minor in Japanese at San Francisco State University. She is an enthusiastic learner and passionate instructor. In 2019 she began teaching children ages 3-15 online and this prompted her to enroll in San Francisco State’s MA TESOL program to pursue a career in teaching. Maya has also tutored multilingual students at Laney College and volunteered working with elder immigrants at the assisted living facility Sequoia Living. Maya is dedicated to supporting learners of English.
Saramanda Swigart is a Sally Casanova scholar at San Francisco State University. For her graduate work, she is investigating videogames as relics of culture and the problematics of the artform as seen through a postcolonial literary lens. She has collaborated on an open-source rhetoric textbook, entitled How Arguments Work, published on LibreTexts in September 2021, and wrote a course outline for "Video Games as Literature," offered for the first time this year at CCSF.
Yasmin Webster-Woog is completing her MA in English with Concentration in TESOL. A native of San Francisco, she earned her BA in French and Francophone Studies at U.C. Santa Cruz. After completing her BA, she taught French for many years. Yasmin’s pedagogical interests include contextualized instruction, critical theories about learner identity, and data literacy. While pursuing her TESOL degree at SF State, Yasmin has worked as a student teacher, tutor, and volunteer for diverse learner populations: immigrant elders, beginning-level learners, and large multi-level classrooms. Yasmin is devoted to acknowledging the complexities of students’ lived experiences and using learner-centered pedagogies in the classroom.