Document
Stephanie Tavera
Position
Name
Stephanie Tavera
Candidate statement
Assistant Professor of English, Texas A&M University, Kingsville [Note: I am up for tenure
this year, on August 1st, 2025.]
Statement: I am what my colleagues at TAMUK (my home institution) call a “foundation builder”: I rebooted our Women’s and Gender Studies program. I launched our new Science & Cultural Studies program. I applied for – and secured – grant funding for both programs. I also launched an annual First-Author’s Celebration Roundtable at the Society for Utopian Studies conference, which has now become an annually featured colloquium in the Utopian Studies journal. While I have individually contributed to my fields of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American women’s literature, medical humanities, and feminist disability studies through monographs, book editions, and scholarship, I also strongly believe in collaborating with others to creating safe spaces for students and colleagues to do the work. Often, creating those spaces means securing funding and managing budgets. I currently oversee two NEH-federal passthrough grants, funded by Humanities Texas and the Teagle Foundation. In addition to managing the budgets for these grants, and the academic programs they support, I have also twice organized the Society
for Utopian Studies conference (once in Austin, TX, and once in Tulum, MX), and worked with the Treasurer to manage the conference budget, for which I broke-even or came in underbudget.
Relevant Publications:
(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American
Censorship. Interventions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture Series.
Edinburgh University Press, 2022. [Specifically, chapters 4 & 5/the conclusion.]
Co-authored introduction and co-edited, with K. Allison Hammer. The Plays of Angelina
Weld Grimké. Wayne State University Press, 2028. Under contract.
Chapter 6: “Save Me from the Waltz: Zelda Fitzgerald and the Trauma Cultures of Expat
Paris.” American Writers in Paris: Then and Now. Ed. Ferdâ Asya. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.
[Also, check out: Episode 177: Zelda Fitzgerald – Save Me the Waltz with Stephanie Peebles
Tavera, Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast, hosted and produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.
January 30, 2024. Listen here on Apple Podcasts. Transcript available here.]
“The Rest of Revolution: Margaret Fuller, Expatriation, and the Tradition of Public Trauma
Cultures.” Conversations: A Publication of the Margaret Fuller Society 6.1
(2025), https://margaretfullersociety.org/newsletter/. Accepted. [This covers material from
Fuller to Edith Wharton to Djuna Barnes.]
“Speculative Genealogies: Global Infertility and the Biopolitics of the Fertility
Dystopia.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 40.1/2 (2023): 108-133.
Website: https://tamuk.academia.edu/StephaniePeeblesTavera is up-to-date. (I haven’t
updated my personal website, https://sptavera.com/, in two years, but it’s still there if you want to see it.)
this year, on August 1st, 2025.]
Statement: I am what my colleagues at TAMUK (my home institution) call a “foundation builder”: I rebooted our Women’s and Gender Studies program. I launched our new Science & Cultural Studies program. I applied for – and secured – grant funding for both programs. I also launched an annual First-Author’s Celebration Roundtable at the Society for Utopian Studies conference, which has now become an annually featured colloquium in the Utopian Studies journal. While I have individually contributed to my fields of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American women’s literature, medical humanities, and feminist disability studies through monographs, book editions, and scholarship, I also strongly believe in collaborating with others to creating safe spaces for students and colleagues to do the work. Often, creating those spaces means securing funding and managing budgets. I currently oversee two NEH-federal passthrough grants, funded by Humanities Texas and the Teagle Foundation. In addition to managing the budgets for these grants, and the academic programs they support, I have also twice organized the Society
for Utopian Studies conference (once in Austin, TX, and once in Tulum, MX), and worked with the Treasurer to manage the conference budget, for which I broke-even or came in underbudget.
Relevant Publications:
(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American
Censorship. Interventions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture Series.
Edinburgh University Press, 2022. [Specifically, chapters 4 & 5/the conclusion.]
Co-authored introduction and co-edited, with K. Allison Hammer. The Plays of Angelina
Weld Grimké. Wayne State University Press, 2028. Under contract.
Chapter 6: “Save Me from the Waltz: Zelda Fitzgerald and the Trauma Cultures of Expat
Paris.” American Writers in Paris: Then and Now. Ed. Ferdâ Asya. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.
[Also, check out: Episode 177: Zelda Fitzgerald – Save Me the Waltz with Stephanie Peebles
Tavera, Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast, hosted and produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.
January 30, 2024. Listen here on Apple Podcasts. Transcript available here.]
“The Rest of Revolution: Margaret Fuller, Expatriation, and the Tradition of Public Trauma
Cultures.” Conversations: A Publication of the Margaret Fuller Society 6.1
(2025), https://margaretfullersociety.org/newsletter/. Accepted. [This covers material from
Fuller to Edith Wharton to Djuna Barnes.]
“Speculative Genealogies: Global Infertility and the Biopolitics of the Fertility
Dystopia.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 40.1/2 (2023): 108-133.
Website: https://tamuk.academia.edu/StephaniePeeblesTavera is up-to-date. (I haven’t
updated my personal website, https://sptavera.com/, in two years, but it’s still there if you want to see it.)
Candidate CV