Rate My Professor Stephanie Brown

Stephanie Brown is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University at Newark. She holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Brown's scholarly work centers on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, with a primary focus on African American literature, critical theory, speculative fiction, critical race theory, and representations of discontent in the fiction of the 1940s and 1950s. Her research explores how literary texts engage with social, historical, and cultural dynamics, particularly in postwar contexts.

Brown authored the book The Postwar African American Novel: Protest and Discontent, 1945-1950 (University Press of Mississippi, 2011), which examines the articulation of protest and discontent in novels from that pivotal era. She co-edited Engaging Tradition, Making It New: Essays on Teaching Recent African American Literature (2008) with Éva Tettenborn and Engaging Tradition and Transgression: Postcolonial Women Writers and Global Pasts (2013) with the same collaborator. Her articles on African American literature and culture have appeared in prominent venues such as Callaloo, African American Review, and The Cambridge Companion to African American Women’s Literature. Recent scholarship integrates her leadership in study abroad programs to Berlin and New Orleans, addressing themes of cosmopolitanism and student engagement through theoretical lenses. She is currently developing a book-length study on genre blurring in twenty-first-century historical and speculative fiction, highlighting innovative literary practices.

In addition to her research contributions, Brown has earned accolades for her teaching and mentoring, including the Evans Teaching Excellence Award from the OSU Newark Campus in 2008 and the Best New Undergraduate Research Mentor Award in 2016. As Associate Dean, she supports academic programs, faculty development, and student success at the regional campus, fostering an environment conducive to scholarly and pedagogical excellence.