Dr. Elka Marie Stevens, an associate professor of visual culture and studio art, serves as fashion design program coordinator and textiles collection curator in Howard University’s Art Department. As an interdisciplinary scholar and artist, Dr. Stevens uses textiles and clothing as a lens of analysis, inspiration, and media for her scholarship. Her current research topics include media and design pedagogy, Black designers, and Zoom® and impression management. Her current fiber and digital creative works explore identity, sustainability, and social justice.
Dr. Stevens teaches design, textiles, international trade, visual culture, and consumer behavior courses. She has three decades of educational, design, retail, media, collections, and industry experience – plus international travel – which inform her teaching, research, and studio practice.
Dr. Stevens received her PhD from the University of Minnesota and maintains membership in various service and professional organizations. She has been a 2019-20 Council of American Overseas Research Centers – Center American Institute of Indian Studies (CAORC – AIIS) fellow, a 2021 Summer Institute for Israel Studies at Brandeis University fellow, and Artist-in-Residence: Creative Practice in Critical Race Studies in the Department of Art at Michigan State University for the 2021-22 academic term. In March 2023, Dr. Stevens became the inaugural Howard University Affiliated Faculty at the American Academy in Rome in Rome, Italy, where she will be researching a new body of work based on global trajectories of Black women artists.