Delia Steverson, Ph.D

Welcome! I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama who researches the relationship between race and disability in African American literature. My overlapping areas of specialization are 19^th and 20^th Century African American literature, Critical Disability Studies, and Southern Studies. I teach a variety of undergraduate courses and graduate seminars, including Slave Narratives and Neo-Slave Narratives, Gender and Sexuality in African American Literature, Critical Disability Studies, and surveys in African American literature.

Named a 2021-2022 Career Enhancement Fellow, I have presented my research nationally and internationally in Spain, Greece, England, Scotland, Canada, and France. My work has been published in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, the College Language Association (CLA) Journal, The South Carolina Review, The Journal of American Culture, and The Explicator. My research on the late African American author, Delores Phillips, was featured on the Disability History Association podcast.

I have also received several grants and awards, including the Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Award (2020) and the Rothman Faculty Summer Fellowship (2019) that supported my research on my upcoming monograph as well as an edited collection on Delores Phillips. I was chosen to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute, entitled “Global Histories of Disability” (2018). As a burgeoning scholar in the field of Southern Studies, I was invited to and participated in the Watson Brown Foundation’s Hickory Hill Forum (2018). Furthermore, my dedication to cross-disciplinary collaboration resulted in a Course Development Grant (2018) through UF’s Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations.

Additionally, I love working with high-schoolers and pre-college students. I have served as Assistant Director of Programs for a non-profit educational organization centered on providing high school students with immersive career explorations in STEM, business, and law. Moreover, as a Curriculum Developer and Course Director, I have trained instructors, and planned and implemented college-level writing courses for pre-college students studying abroad in Central America, South Pacific, and Asia.