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"Social justice is not a matter of money, but a matter of will."
~ Septima Clark, 1962

"Wisdom is the best of all treasures ."
~ Makeda, 10th century BCE

Professional BIo

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans is Director of African American Studies and Associate Professor of African American Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is the author of the acclaimed book Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (University Press of Florida, 2007). Her newest co-edited book, African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education (SUNY Press, 2009) considers how race impacts university-community partnerships. She has also co-edited Africana Studies at the Graduate Level: A Twenty-first Century Perspective, a special issue of the Western Journal of Black Studies with Dr. Mark Christian. Dr. Evans is a Colonel Allan R. and Margaret G. Crow Term Professor for the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2010-11.

In May 2003, Stephanie Evans received her Ph.D. in African American Studies with a concentration in History and Politics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and in May 2002 earned a Master’s Degree in the same field. Also in 2002, she completed the Graduate Certificate Program in Advanced Feminist Studies.

Dr. Evans's main research interest is Black women’s intellectual and educational history in the United States. In her dissertation, Living Legacies: Black Women, Educational Philosophies, and Community Service, 1865-1965, she considered the educational ideas of four African American women educators: Fanny Jackson Coppin, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Septima Clark. She has since published foundational texts analyzing the past, present and future of graduate training in Africana Studies. In current research, she explores the foundations of Black women's connections of higher education to performance and social justice movements during the Jim Crow Era and the Jazz Age. Specifically, she investigates areas of Black women's studies and comparative humanism relating to higher education.

She has conducted research at University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center in Washington D.C. and through the University of Florida’s Paris Research Center in Paris, France. She has presented her work in many locations, including San Diego, Chicago, New York, St. Petersberg, Princeton, Atlanta, Boulder, Albuquerque, and Cambridge, England. She has attended every ASALH (Association for the Study of African American Life and History) Convention since 2000.

While completing her dissertation, Dr. Evans worked as the Assistant Director for Youth Education Programs in the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In the summer of 1999 she was a research intern at Stanford University’s Haas Center for Public Service and worked on issues of cultural identity and community service.

In May 1999 she earned an Interdisciplinary Studies BA in Comparative Humanities--gender and cross-cultural American studies--from California State University, Long Beach.  In her undergraduate work, she earned high honors: Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, and Outstanding Department Graduate and was a Kellogg Fellow for one year and a McNair Scholar for two years.

She teaches "Women's Studies Senior Seminar/Capstone," “Research Methods in African American History: Jazz Historiography,” "African Americans in Higher Education," "US Women of Color," "Black Gender," “Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Women,” "Mentoring At-Risk/Local Youth," and “Introduction to African American Studies” at the University of Florida. She has taught service-learning courses in the Women’s Studies Department and for the Honors College through the Office of Community Service Learning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has also taught high school literature, grammar, SAT preparation, and college preparedness for the Holyoke Massachusetts Upward Bound program.

Ultimately, she works to reflect and reclaim (Sankofa) the legacy of the scribe Seshat "Lady of the House of Books," Makeda of Ethiopia (Queen of Sheba), and the many women in world cultures who represent wisdom, freedom, and democracy for the posterity of the ancestors and the benefit of future ages. In many ways, she is a community gardener, cultivating ideas to make the academy an intellectual democracy because, as Dr. Anna Julia Cooper wrote, everyone deserves eduational opportunity and "this right to grow is sacred and inviolable."

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Personal BIo

My motto is: AMANI MOTO  (May you find a balance between peace and passion). I live by the values that I have learned from women in my research (like Drs. Cooper, Bethune, Player, Dunham, and Maathai), as well as positive artists like Jill Scott, India Arie, and Erykah Badu.

I was born in Washington, D.C. at Howard University's hospital, but was raised overseas (Air Force brat) and the Mid-west before spending most of my growing years on the West Coast. Though I have always been a bookworm, I am a first-generation and adult re-entry student who began college in earnest at the age of 25. I have benefited much from those who took time to mentor me and in my work, I pass on the guidance and encouragement that has been offered. ~~[ View Page : SPECIAL THANKS TO MENTORS].

I am a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated -- Mu Upsilon Omega Chapter, Gainesville, Florida. The leadership, members, and (especially) my line sisters continually inspire me.

I am absolutely in love with and happily married to Mr. Curtis D. Byrd, head of McNair and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of Florida. Though professionally I remain "Dr. Evans," I am now very blessed socially and spiritually to be Mrs. Byrd. ~~ DocandByrd.net ~

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