Stephanie Y. Evans

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans is a Professor of Black Women’s Studies and serves as Director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. Her research interest is Black women’s intellectual history, memoirs, and mental health. She is author of three books: Black Women’s Yoga History: Memoirs of Inner Peace (SUNY, 2021); Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment (SUNY, 2014), and Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (UF, 2007). She is also lead co-editor of three books, Black Women and Social Justice Education (SUNY, 2019), Black Women’s Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability (SUNY, 2017), and African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education (SUNY, 2009).

Dr. Evans has two projects in progress: “Chair at the Table: Black Women Department Chairs on Academic Service, Leadership, and Balance” (a 2021 special issue of Palimpsest journal) and Black Women and Public Health: Regenerative History, Practice, and Planning (in production, SUNY). She is curator of several web resources, including the Black Women’s Studies Booklist, Africana Memoirs Database, Black Women’s Music Database, and the Black Women’s Yoga History site.

She has co-edited two community-based publications, OASIS: Oldways Africana Soup in Stories (with Oldways, a food and nutrition nonprofit) and Purple Sparks: Poems by Sexual Assault Survivors (with youthSpark, an anti sex-trafficking and youth abuse prevention non-profit).

At GSU, Professor Evans is affiliate faculty in the Department of African American Studies, the Center for the Study of Stress, Trauma, and Resilience, as well as in the Center for Studies of Africa and Its Diaspora. Between 2011 and 2019, she served as Chair of the of African American Studies, Africana Women’s Studies, and History (AWH) Department at Clark Atlanta University. Dr. Evans was recognized with the CAU 2017 Aldridge-McMillan Award for Excellence in Research.

Stephanie Evans received her PhD in 2003 from the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies with a concentration in History and Politics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; in May 2002 she earned a Master’s Degree in the same field. Also in 2002, she completed the Graduate Certificate Program in Advanced Feminist Studies.