Maurice Stevens is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at the Ohio State University and an adjunct faculty member for the Pacifica Graduate Institute in the department of Depth Psychology’s Community, Liberation, and Eco-Psychology Program. Dr. Stevens is also a writing coach for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Stevens received their B.A. in Religion and Anthropology from Princeton University and their M.A. and Ph.D. from the interdisciplinary History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Stevens’ research interests include the formation and representation of identity in and through visual culture and political performance, critical trauma theory, disability studies, critical and transformative pedagogy, science and technology studies, popular cultural performance, theories of affect and embodiment, and participatory knowledge production. Dr. Stevens’ first book is titled Troubling Beginnings: Trans(per)forming African-American History and Identity, and they are currently working on a second book called Catastrophe’s Glow: A Critical Trauma Theory for Chaotic Times.

Dr. Stevens brings expertise in designing interdisciplinary and engaged research methodologies, participatory leadership models, and community-driven social justice informed research to their scholarly interests.

PUBLICATIONS
Troubling Beginnings: Trans(per)forming African-American History and Identity, (Routledge, New York), 2003

“Understanding Core Critical Concepts: Experiential Explorations into the Contextualization of Knowledge Production” Dugan, J. P., Turman, N. T., Barnes, A., Torrez, M. A. (Eds.). Leadership Theory: A Facilitator’s Guide for Cultivating Critical Perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

“Trauma is as Trauma Does: The Politics of Affect in Catastrophic Times,” in Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding, Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life, ed. Monica Casper, Eric H.R. Wertheimer, NYU Press 2016, pp. 19-36

“What can ‘Diversity’ Mean for Ohio State Faculty in the Coming Century?” OSU Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s DRUM: Special Issue: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, November 2014

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Takes Root in the Heartland: A Reflection on the Sense of it,” Oppositional Conversations: Athletics, Vol. 1, No. 1, January, 2014

“Trauma’s Essential Bodies” Corpus: An Interdisciplinary Reader on Bodies and Knowledge, edited by Monica Casper and Paisley Currah, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

“Subject to Counter-Memory: Disavowal and Black Manhood in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X,” Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader, ed. Janice D. Hamlet and Robin Means Coleman, Peter Lang Publishers, Spring 2008

“Haunted by Harm: Tortured Bodies and Exceptional Spaces in the Halls of Jurisprudence,” in Space, Haunting, Discourse, ed. Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wenno, Cambridge Scholars Publishers (New Castle, UK); 2007

“From the Deluge: Traumatic Iconography and Emergent Visions of Nation in Katrina’s Wake,” English Language Notes, 44.2 Fall/Winter, 2006

“Ephemeral Traces: Enigmatic Signification, Race and the Sciences of Memory,” Memory, Haunting, Discourse, eds. Maria Holmgren Troy and Elisabeth Wenno, (Karlstad University Press, Karlstad Sweden) 2005, 265-279

“Subject to Counter-Memory: Disavowal and Black Manhood in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X”; SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, Vol. 28, No. 1, Autumn 2002, p.277

“Phenotype(d) Embodiment in Haile Garima’s Sankofa” Black Arts Quarterly, Stanford, Stanford University Committee on Black Performing Arts, v3, n1, Summer 1998, p.9

“Public (Re)Memory, Vindicating Narratives, and Troubling Beginnings: Toward a Critical Postcolonial Psychoanalytical Theory” in the Blackwell Critical Reader
Series Fanon: A Critical Reader, Ed. Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley Whiting and Renée T. White, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 1996, p.203

CURRENT BOOK PROJECT

Catastrophe’s Glow: A Critical Trauma Theory for Chaotic Times

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Critical Trauma Theory

Individual and Community identity transformation and performance in the context of precarity and overwhelming events

Participatory leadership and knowledge production

Critical and Transformative Pedagogies

Intersectionality theory, intersectional experience, and intersectional social action

EDUCATION
Ph.D. in History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz