Stephanie Sears received her B.A in psychology from Stanford
University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University's
joint program in African American Studies and Sociology. She
teaches several courses, including Introduction to Sociology;
Sociology of Gender; African American Culture and Society; Social
Problems; Critical Race and Ethnicity; Community Organizing; and
the Honors Thesis Seminar. She is director of African American
Studies and a faculty member of the Gender Studies Program.
Professor Sears' research interests include gender,
race and ethnicity, youth cultures, and power and marginalization.
As an interdisciplinary scholar, her research examines the ways
race, class, gender, sexuality, and generation intersect and
interact in complex and contradictory ways often simultaneously
reproducing oppression and facilitating empowerment. These
theoretical concerns and interdisciplinary approach formed the
basis of her current manuscript, Imagining Black Womanhood
, in which she examines how Black women and girls work with and
against each other to create safe space, construct identities and
empower themselves. Her current research, Dance Lessons ,
builds upon these interests and asks how race, class, gender,
sexuality and generational politics are created, performed and
negotiated via dance.
Professor Sears has also served as the Faculty Director of the
Esther Madriz Diversity Scholars Living-Learning Community.
