Sex Workers’ Rights and Feminist Studies
Stephanie is currently a founding Advisory Board member of the Black Sex Workers Collective, a global human rights organization, and the founder of the Sex Workers Archival Project, a primary source share focused on mid-twentieth century US sex workers’ histories. Her multi-disciplinary approaches to the movement for sex workers’ rights have been cited in mediums spanning from creative writing workshops to US History dissertations. Stephanie’s experience in advocating for sex workers’ rights spans fifteen years, and includes:
university teaching and course development at undergraduate and graduate levels
developing/facilitating trainings for social workers
organizing events and political actions
research (legal, ethnographic, and archival) and data compilation
conference presentations
various leadership positions
grant writing
peer support services
Writings
You can find a list of literary writings, largely related to sex workers’ rights and feminism more broadly, here.
Hooker Killjoys and Beautiful Girls Available Now: Sex Workers Speak Out on Social Media | Ampersand: An American Studies Journal
Review: Domestic economies: Women, work, and the American dream in Los Angeles | Latino Studies
On the Border of Victim and Threat: Sex Work and Public Health in the Era of Trump | Dosis-- medical humanities + social justice, Winter/Spring 2018.
Select Conferences, Panels, and Invited Talks
“Sex Workers in the Archive” | Invited talk at Princeton University, Effron Center for the Study of America, Princeton, NJ, April 2024
“Glistening Multiplicities: A Roundtable of Sex Working Poets and Labor in the Margins” | Panelist alongside Emily Marie Passos Duffy, Natalie Earnhart, Aristilde Kirby, Dylan Krieger, and Shay Reynolds, New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 2023
“Vice Squads, Taxi Cabs, and B-Girls: The Discursive Shadows of US Sex Workers’ Histories in 1930-1965” | Invited talk at the University of Cambridge Faculty of History Gender and Sexuality workshop Cambridge, UK / online, October 2022
“Trains, Texts, and Tits: Sex Work, Technology, and Movement” | Magazines, Backpages & Obscenity: Panelist alongside ThotScholar and Kate D’Adamo, Hacking/Hustling, May 2021
“Sex Work is Work: The Case for Decriminalization” | Panelist alongside NY State Senator Julia Salazar, Akynos, and Melissa Gira Grant, Brooklyn Public Library Justice Initiatives, April 2021
“The Mother Tongue: Narratives of Race, Maternity, and 'Deviance'” | Paper presented at the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association 2017 Conference, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, October 2017
“The Mother Tongue: An Intersectional Analysis of Narratives of Maternity and Female ‘Deviance’” | Paper presented at Backward Glances: Mediating Resistance, Media and Historiography Graduate Student Conference Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, September 2017
“Resources, Not Rescue: The Ethics of Surveillance Technologies in the Movement Against the Commercial Sex Trade” | Poster presented at Rutgers iSchool Graduate Student Research Invitational, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, November 2016
“"Who polices the police?"; An Intersectional Critique of "Anti-Trafficking" Measures and the Case for Decriminalization” Paper presented at the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault conference on sexual violence and prevention Albany, NY, March 2016
“Rape Culture, Title IX and Campus Sexual Assault Policies: Feminist Information Literacy Frameworks to Support Faculty and Student Discernment” with co-researcher Deborah LaFond | Paper presented at the Capital District Feminist Studies Conference, Russell Sage College, Troy, NY, January 2016
“Sugar and Spice: Deconstructing an Old Binary with New Manifestations” | Paper presented at the Desiree Alliance Conference, Las Vegas, NV, July 2013
“The History of a ‘Lost Girl’: Searching for a Better Representation of the Sex Worker in Cinema” | Paper presented at the Desiree Alliance Conference, Las Vegas, NV, July 2013