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College of Humanities People

Maurice Stevens, Associate Professor

Department of Comparative Studies: http://comparativestudies.osu.edu/



Education:
BA-Religion/Anthropology, Princeton University; MA- History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz; PhD-History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

General Background:
Teaching and Research
Critical trauma theory, Critical race & legal theory, critical psychoanalysis, visual culture, critical gender studies, narrative, historiography, ethnic and American studies, semiotics

Associate Professor Maurice E. Stevens received his Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and works in the areas of American, ethnic, critical gender, and cultural studies. He is particularly interested in the formation of identities in and through visual culture and performance, and in historical memory in relation to trauma theory, critical gender studies,critical race theory, psychoanalytic theory, and popular cultural performance. He has recently completed work on Troubling Beginnings: Trans(per)forming African American History and Identity (Routledge 2003).

Curriculum Vitae

Education | Publications | Research Interests | Academic Employment | Special Qualifications | Honors and Awards | Scholarly Talks | Non-Academic Employment

EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SANTA CRUZ
PhD in History of Consciousness, 2000
M.A. in History of Consciousness, 1995

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
B.A. in Religion (Bridge with Anthropology), 1992

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

"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
"From the Past Imperfect: Towards a Critical Trauma Theory"

RESEARCH INTERESTS
The formation of American identities in and through visual culture and
performance.

Historiography, and historical memory in relation to “trauma theory,” critical race
theory, critical psychoanalytic theory and popular cultural performance.

American, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Studies
*Associated Faculty Member—Department of African and African-American Studies *Associated Faculty Member—Department of Women’s Studies
*Associated Faculty Member—Program in Film Studies

*Associated Faculty Member- Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies, Moritz College of Law

PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE, CARPINTERIA, CA - 2006-Present
Adjunct Faculty - Department of Depth Psychology

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Departments of Literature and Ethnic Studies

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
Instructor, Department of American Studies
Teaching Assistant, Departments of History of Consciousness and American Studies

SPECIAL QUALIFICATIONS
Focused training in theories of pedagogy and teaching

Selected as an editorial board member for the forthcoming journal Fanon and The Humanities.

Selected as a “Working Group” representative to the Mellon Foundation and the Social Sciences Research Council.

HONORS/AWARDS
2008-2009 William S. Vaughn Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University, Visiting Associate Professor of English
2005-2006 Ohio State University Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award
2005-2006 Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Postdoctoral Fellowship
2005-2006 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Fellowship
2005-2006 Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Postdoctoral Fellowship—declined
2000 - 2001 Ford Foundation and National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities

1997 - 1998 Ford Foundation and National Research Council Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities

1989 – 1990 Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship

SCHOLARLY TALKS
INVITED PRESENTATIONS:

November 2007 – Invited Discussant, “The Matter of our Emergence,” as part of the Columbus Art Museum public lecture series. Big Picture: Larger than Life Stories Aminah Robinson’s Water Street Journeys

November 2007 – Invited Discussant for the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback, as part of the Kirwan Institute on Race and Ethnicity’s first annual film festival

May 2007 – Invited Discussant, “Reading Trauma: Interpreting Body and Text,” SSRC-Mellon Mays Summer Conference, Columbia University

April 2007 – “Unexceptional Exceptions: On Racial Terror, the Tortured Body, and Harm in Legal Thinking,” presented at the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

April 2007 – Panel Moderator,”Wexner Center Director’s Dialogue: Race Matters,” Ohio State University Wexner Center for the Arts

March 2007 – “Authenticity Moves/ Intersectionality Persists: Conversatoins with Glenn Ligon’s Some Changes,” Wexner Center Gallery Talk on the Work of Glenn Ligon, Ohio State University Wexner Center for the Arts

September 2006 – Online Discussion Coordinator “Community Identity in the Wake of Traumatic Events,” as part of the summit titled Katrina: After the Storm – Civic Engagement Through Arts, Humanities and Technology (http://www.katrinasummit.uiuc.edu), organized under the auspices of UIUC’s Seedbed Initiative for Transdomain Creativity directed by Allison Clark.

June 2006—Paper and Panel Presentation “The Tortured Body in the Manor of Jurisprudence,” presented at the Space Haunting Discourse/ Discourse Haunting Space International Interdisciplinary Conference sponsored by the Department of English at Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden

May 2006—Paper and Panel Presentation “Ephemeral Traces: Race and the Sciences of Memory,” presented at the first annual Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society Conference of Fellows, held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

April 2006—Invited “In-Service” Presenter “After Shock: Making the Self Anew in Times of Catastrophe,” presented to faculty at the Pacifica Graduate Institute under the auspices of the Depth Psychology Department, Santa Barbara, CA

March 2006—Invited Respondent/Consultant and Faculty Mentor Social Science Research Council, Mellon Mayes Fellowship Program, “Proposal and Dissertation Writing Workshop.” Week-long workshop focusing on the work of SSRC-Mellon Mays Fellowship recipients, Philadelphia, PA

February 2006—Invited Presenter “Race, Trauma and the Ephemeral in Critical Trauma Studies,” presented to Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society fellowship recipients’ monthly colloquium, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, IL

September 2005—Paper and Panel Presentation Humanizing the Humanities: Culture Literacy Project, held at Villanova University, Philadelphia, PA

March 2005—Panel Respondent “Trading Twelves: New Directions in Black Performance Studies 1” presented at the Performance Studies International #11 annual conference held at Brown University, Providence RI

February 2005—Panel Presentation “Race and Genetics,” part of the On Moral Grounds ongoing series of public conversations sponsored by The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities and the OSU African-American and African Studies Department Community Extension Center, Columbus, OH

November 2004—Paper Presentation “Ephemeral Traces: Enigmatic Signification, Race and the Sciences of Memory,” presented in the Brown Bag Lecture Series of the African-American and African Studies Department, Columbus, OH

July 2004—Respondent Asked to respond to three dissertation proposals and give an informal talk entitled “Sustainable Integrities” to graduate students in the USC/UC Irvine Summer institute at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

June 2004—Public Discussion Panelist Abu Ghraib: a Public Discussion—How Can We Look at These Images?, sponsored by Amnesty International USA Group 67, Amnesty International/OSU and The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, Columbus, OH

May 2004—Chair and Commentator Panel titled “On the Other Side: Meditations on Death in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise,” presented at the national meeting of the American Literature Association in San Francisco, CA

September 2003— Paper Presentation “Gold, Pink and Black: What Wore on Barbara Jordon” presented at the Ohio State University’s Wexner Center Gallery Talk series in connection with their installation Image Stream, Columbus OH

May 2003— Paper Presentation "Everyday People, Every Day Pain: State Terror and Black Masculinity in Adrienne Kennedy's Sleep Deprivation Chamber" presented at the Ohio State University Adrienne Kennedy Symposium, sponsored by the Theater Department, the African and African American Studies Department and the Humanities Institute for Collaborative Research, Columbus, OH

May 2003— Paper Presentation “At What Cost Sanctuary?: Working Through the (Web)Site of Memory” presented at the Ohio State University College of Humanities Spring Colloquium on Humanities Computing, sponsored by the COH Humanities Technology Advisory Committee and the Humanities Institute for Collaborative Research, Columbus, OH

April 2003— Paper Presentation “When Authenticated Gender Becomes Racialized Memory: Contemporary Visual Representations of ‘Traumatic" History’” presented at the Ohio State University Gender and Ethnicity Across Divides Conference, sponsored by the Spanish and Portuguese, Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, Women’s Studies, Comparative Studies departments and the The Ohio State Humanities Institute, Columbus, OH

June 2002—Panel/ Moderator “Scholars of Color in the Academy: A Panel of Recent PhDs” presented at the Mellon Foundation and Social Science Research Council Conference, Academic Exchange Session, Dillard University, New Orleans, LA

April 2002— Workshop/ Presentation “Men of Color Feminisms” presented at the conference titled Building Links Building Resistance: UC Wide Women of Color Conference: UC San Diego, San Diego, CA

March 2002— Paper Presentation “Dealing with Historical Traumas of Slavery and Colonization in Europe and the Americas” Integration in Policy and Practice in Europe and the Americas: The Nicholas R. Clifford Symposium, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT

PEER REVIEWED PAPER PRESENTATIONS:

October 2004—Paper Presentation “The Tense Present: Emergent Terrorism’s Challenge to the Temporality of Trauma” presented at the annual meeting of The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society held at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, New York, NY

June 2004—Paper Presentation “In the Mirror Caught: Race and Its Haunting Presence in the Memory Sciences,” presented at the Memory, Haunting, Discourse/Discourse, Haunting, Memory International Interdisciplinary Conference sponsored by the department of English at Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden

April 2004—Paper Presentation “Mythical Time/Space and Fantastic Bodies: Accounting for Race and Gender in Hollywood’s Embodied Economy,” presented at the joint meeting of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association conference, San Antonio, TX

November 2003—Paper Presentation “Trauma in the Tense Present: Emergent Terrorism’s Challenge to the Sciences of Memory” presented at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, Chicago Ill.

February 2003—Paper Presentation “Web(Sites) of Memory: Trauma Studies, Virtual Melancholy and a Sociogeny for Tomorrow” presented at the Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association annual Conference, Computer Culture Panel, Albuquerque, NM

June 2001—Paper Presentation “Disremembering Histories: Race as the Enigmatic Limit Case in Trauma Studies” Mellon Foundation and Social Science Research Council Conference, Academic Exchange Session, Duke University, Raleigh-Durham, NC

October 2000—Paper Presentation “Disremembering Histories: Race as the Enigmatic Limit Case in Trauma Studies” Ford Foundation Conference, Academic Exchange Session, National Research Council, Irvine, CA

NON-ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT
I include here my work experience in the area of behavioral health because of the direct connection it has with my intellectual production. Moreover, I believe that produced knowledges must be grounded in the everyday lived experiences of human beings to achieve their ‘critical’ worth. Thus, I consider my work with people negotiating their own personal traumas as they attempt to fashion usable conceptions of the world and their place in it, as the moment wherein I am most fully teacher and student.

SAN DIEGO DEVELOPMENTAL SPECIALISTS 2000-present
San Diego, CA
Consultant – Responsible for ongoing staff support, case management consultation and to provide clinical services via phone and occasional “face to face” contact for patients and families facing challenges of attentional difficulty and mental health. Responsible to provide supervision and counseling as appropriate. Responsible to perform intake and initial assessment of new patients and their families as needed. Responsible to provide documentation of clinical interventions.

SAN DIEGO DEVELOPMENTAL SPECIALISTS 1999-2000
San Diego, CA
Senior Coordinator, Instructor – Responsible to coordinate patient care and provide case management for patients and families facing challenges of attentional difficulty and mental health. Responsible to manage staff and provide supervision and counseling as appropriate. Responsible to administer examinations and history gathering tools essential to the diagnosis and treatment of ADD/ADHD, neuro-cognitive processing difficulties, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Responsible to perform intake and initial assessment of new patients and their families. Responsible to participate in weekly “team meetings” to determine case disposition.

SAN LUIS REY HOSPITAL 1998-1999
Encinitas, CA
Mental Health Counselor – Responsible to design and implement therapeutic programming for adults, adolescents, and children on intensive psychiatric care units. Organize and direct group, milieu and informal individual counseling in addition to activity therapy. Responsible to chart on cases in ‘POIR’ format while also filing ‘daily reports’ on all patients. Responsible to provide supervision to staff mental health workers and nursing staff as needed.

COMPREHENSIVE CHILD CRISIS SERVICE 1987 - 1989
San Francisco, CA
Intake Worker – Responsible to manage preliminary intake interviews with new clients, establish case files with histories of events, previous psychological services provided, and make billing arrangements. Responsible for data entry into the system-wide (SF Community Mental Health System) information pool.

COMPREHENSIVE CHILD CRISIS SERVICE 1985 - 1987
San Francisco, CA
Full-Time Day Mental Health Worker – Working in two person teams, made on-site and field hospitalization assessments. Performed mental status exams, assessed support systems, took family histories, and arranged for hospitalization and/or follow-up psychotherapy (based on crisis intervention model) as appropriate.

COMPREHENSIVE CHILD CRISIS SERVICE 1985 - 1989
San Francisco, CA
Per Diem Night On-Call Mental Health Worker – Working in two person teams, made field hospitalization assessments. Performed mental status exams, assessed support systems, took family histories, and arranged for hospitalization, home based dispositions, and/or follow-up psychotherapy.

ADOLESCENT DAY TREATMENT CENTER 1987 - 1989
San Francisco, CA
Milieu/Activities Therapist – Designed and implemented an extended milieu therapy program servicing schizophrenic and psychotic adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18. This program included work, life skills, expressive, and physical therapy as well as weekly “outings.” In addition to receiving three hours professional supervision per week, providing supervision for volunteer staff and interns on milieu related features of the program was expected “Filled-in” for therapists on vacation in individual, family, and group therapy.

PROGRAM REACH 1989 - 1992
Trenton, NJ
Via the auspices of the Wilson Neighborhood Center, the Trenton New Jersey Unified School System, and Princeton University’s Community House, designed, found funding for, and implemented an after-school education and mental health program oriented towards servicing middle and high school aged youth identified as “at risk” by virtue of their having both behavioral and learning “problems.” Supervised multiple volunteers and coordinated communication between the various institutions supporting the program. The program required limited parental participation (one group meeting every month) and made use of various teaching techniques drawing upon milieu therapy methods.

ADOLESCENT INTENSIVE RESIDENTIAL SERVICES 1992 - 1993
San Francisco, CA
Per Diem Day Milieu/Activities Therapist – Implemented an extended milieu therapy program servicing schizophrenic and psychotic adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 in a 24-hour residential facility. Milieu programming included, life skills, expressive, and physical therapies as well as twice-weekly community “outings.”



American Studies
Citizenship
Critical Trauma Theory
Critical and Cultural Theory
Gender and Sexuality
Performance
Race and Ethnicity
Visuality