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Black women’s ideas
Can help solve global problems
At least, they solved mine

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans

I research Black women's intellectual history, focusing on memoirs and mental health. My work examines Black women's self-care and social justice--what I call #HistoricalWellness. Most recently, I study elder memoirs, which provide lessons about healing traditions by nonagenarians (including Harriet Tubman, Dona Irvin, Marian Anderson, and Leah Chase) and centenarians (Dr. Anna Julia Cooper, the Delany sisters, Dovey Roundtree, and Ida Keeling). These narratives reveal legacies of Black women who preserved mind, body, and spirit to empower themselves and others. Black women's memoirs are survival guides. Memoirists can be mentors, models of self-determination, and guides to transformation. Elders posit that, despite challenges, inner peace is possible. My studies stem from ideas like Cooper's progressive peace, Sonia Sanchez's peace haiku, and Byllye Avery's self-healing. By researching self-love, self-respect, and self-care, I provide consciousness-raising resources for social justice education.

My work in Black women's studies provides historical insights into public health problems of chronic stress, anxiety, and depression stemming from violence that disproportionately impacts Black women--particularly sexual violence. I teach the joy of resistance: to name, analyze, and dismantle systems of inequity. In essence, my work is a meditation on Black women's wellness as a form of sustainable struggle. A luta continua.

2017 Clark Atlanta University Delores Aldridge-Eldridge McMillan Award for Excellence in Research

2010-2011 University of Florida School of Arts and Sciences Colonel Allan and Margaret Crow Term Professor