Fabienne Kanor
Marian Trygve Freed Early Career Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies and Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Fabienne intentionally includes diverse perspectives, practices, and epistemologies that illustrate the complex and dynamic interrelationships among the different identities that shape our lives and societies. When designing her syllabus or delivering a lecture, she asks herself whose voice is missing. Since joining Penn State, she is fully committed to creating and maintaining a supportive learning environment for these values to flourish and take shape.
In all of her audiovisual projects, she surrounds herself with professional artists and technicians who combine the power of art with civic action to confront race and systemic oppression and promote social change to build a more egalitarian community. For example, in the first episode of her documentary film series Les contes de la cale (Tales from the Hold of a Slave Ship), she has worked closely with the cinematographer Andrew Sutton who has devoted a large part of his life to documenting the Rwandan genocide and its consequences. She also worked with a young Senegalese migrant survivor who tells his story of drifting for fourteen days in a pirogue in the Atlantic Ocean.