Tracy Stephens, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Tracy A. Stephens is Assistant Professor of English and General Education. She has taught at Queens since Fall of 2017. She primarily teaches first-year writing courses (QEN 101 and QEN 102) and has also taught the Honors Gateway Seminar (HNR 110) as well as literature classes in the General Education program.

Her QEN 101 and HNR 110 courses focus on growth toward the Civic Mindedness and Global Mindedness attributes central to a Queens education, asking students to think about global problems and how they can use rhetoric and writing as tools that can inspire action to solve those problems. Her QEN 102 courses focus on information literacy surrounding health topics.

She has also taught courses on disability literature that expose students to the perspectives of disabled authors in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, as well as courses on African American literature that focus on genres that would normally be excluded from the literary canon, including sci-fi, fantasy, and hip hop.
As a teacher, she prioritizes accessibility and transparency and works hard to enable students to succeed by providing flexibility, variety, careful scaffolding, clear expectations, and ample feedback.

As a scholar, her work is in postcolonial studies, mostly as applied to American literature, which means examining US imperialism and neocolonialism as well as internal colonial dynamics and manifestations of racial capitalism shaping the work of Black and indigenous writers. She also does work in disability studies, an interest stemming from her own vision impairment, and horror studies, an interest stemming from a lifelong love of horror movies and Stephen King.

Dr. Stephens also loves cats, the Detroit Red Wings, the MCU, and, above all things, sleep.

Education

Ph.D., English, Northern Illinois University
M.A., English, Grand Valley State University
B.A., English, Grand Valley State University