Stephanie Sears

Stephanie Sears received her BA in psychology from Stanford University, and her MA and PhD 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 a faculty member of the African American Studies and Gender Studies programs, and director of the Esther Madriz Diversity Scholars Living-Learning Community.

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.

• Gender, race and ethnicity
• Youth cultures
• Power and marginalization

• Director, Esther Madriz Diversity Scholars Living-Learning Program

• PhD, African American Studies and Sociology, Yale University
• MA, African American Studies and Sociology, Yale University