Stenport served as professor of Scandinavian Studies, Conrad Humanities Scholar, and director of the European Union Center at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She brought cross-disciplinary leadership and program building strength to the European Center at the University and the Scandinavian Studies Program and was successful in securing external funding in these areas. 

In addition, she is highly respected for excellence and innovation in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, for developing interesting and engaging curricular options, and for leadership and service.

Stenport was trained at the University of California at Berkeley with emphases in French, German, and Scandinavian Studies and in cultural geography. Her research examines how texts and artifacts relate to place, what cultural rootedness says about representational practices, and what these practices suggest about the spaces from which they emerge. 

Her work focuses on spatial imaginaries in the Nordic region, Germany, and France and on transatlantic relations with North America.  Most recently, she has been broadening this scope to include environmental humanities, indigenous methodologies, and theories of the circumpolar Arctic (Scandinavia, Greenland, Canada, and Russia), an expansion that draws attention to diverse representational practices and modes of circulation. 

She has published more than fifty journal articles and book chapters, two single-authored monographs, and several edited and co-edited volumes.

Dean Jacqueline Royster expressed her appreciation to the search committee led by School of Literature, Media, and Communication Chair Richard Utz and said that she looks forward to working with Stenport as the School of Modern Languages continues to define a national and international vanguard for language and culture education.