School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 191-200 of 241 Results
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Ramon Saldivar
Hoagland Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of English, of Comparative Literature and, by courtesy, of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy current research is concerned with the relationships among race, form, genre, representing what Jeffrey T. Nealon has recently term the “post-postmodern.” In the latest version of this research presented at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin I use Sesshu Foster's "Atomik Aztex" as an example twenty-first century racial imaginaries. Part fantasy, part hallucinatory sur-realism, part muckraking novel in the grand realist protest tradition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), part historical novel in the mode of Vassily Grossman’s great Stalinist era masterpiece, Life & Fate (1980) set during the battle of Stalingrad, part ethnographic history about religious, military, and social structure of the pre-Columbian Aztec (Nahua, Mexica) world, part LA noir, and wholly Science Fiction alternative and counterfactual history, it exemplifies many of the criteria of the “post-postmodern.” Moreover, in addition to this range of formal matters, Atomik Aztex is concerned with two other topics:
•a reconceptualization of the way that race affects the formations of history, and
•the reshaping of the form of the novel in order to represent that reconceptualization.
With eighty-two characters populating the story, itself a plotted compendium of at least two radically separate yet intertwined universes of action, in a continually shifting movement from past, present, and future times, Atomik Aztex is a radical experiment in novelistic form. Using the tools of quantitative formalism developed for literary use by the Stanford University Literary Lab, I wish to show how the work of the computational humanities, in conjunction with traditional hermeneutic methods of literary analysis can help us understand the radical turn of contemporary American fiction toward speculative realism. -
Stefano Santo Sabato
Visiting Research Scientist, Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA)
Visiting Scholar, EnglishBioStefano Santo Sabato, PhD is an AI researcher and serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience spanning applied artificial intelligence, collaborative virtual environments (CVE), and large-scale digital knowledge systems. Over the course of his career, he has led and contributed to more than 100 AI projects across the United States and Europe, working at the intersection of advanced technology, human-centered design, and organizational infrastructure.
Trained as a computer scientist and holding a PhD in Software Engineering, Stefano’s early academic work focused on collaborative virtual environments, intelligent interaction, and the design of systems that support shared cognition and coordination in complex digital spaces. As a university researcher and professor in Italy, he developed a strong research foundation in applied AI and distributed collaborative systems, contributing to the evolution of human-computer interaction in networked environments.
In parallel with his academic work, Stefano played a role in national digital transformation efforts as a member of the Italian Digital Agenda Task Force, where he contributed to strategic initiatives including the development of frameworks for digital identity and modern public digital infrastructure.
Today, Stefano is affiliated with Stanford University as a Visiting Research Scientist, engaging with interdisciplinary research in spatial, textual, and human-centered AI. His work emphasizes the importance of top-down, multidisciplinary approaches to AI design—grounded in the idea that intelligence must be embedded within systems that preserve context, continuity, and institutional memory.
He is also the founder and CEO of Fyberloom, a San Francisco-based AI company building next-generation infrastructure for organizational knowledge mapping. Drawing from his long-standing research interests in collaboration, context, and intelligent systems, Stefano’s work explores how enterprises can move beyond fragmented information toward continuously evolving, navigable knowledge environments.
Outside of research and technology, Stefano is an avid guitarist, with a long-standing interest in the cultural dimensions of memory, storytelling, and human expression.
