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Elizabeth Stephens
  • Pronouns Use my name
  • Title
    • Professor
  • Division Arts Division
  • Department
    • Art Department
  • Affiliations Feminist Studies Department, Digital Arts and New Media
  • Phone
    831-502-7312
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Digital Arts Research Center, DARC 341
  • Office Hours DARC 229
  • Mail Stop Art Department
  • Mailing Address
    • E-104 Baskin Visual Arts, 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Art, Film, Environmental Justice, Social Justice
  • Courses Art 220, 80E

Summary of Expertise

  • Film
  • Environmental Art and Social Practice
  • Performance Art

Research Interests

Developing the field of Ecosexuality.

Environmental Art and Social Practice

Environmental Justice

Queer Art

Postporn

Walking

Biography, Education and Training

 

Beth Stephens is an artist, and filmmaker with a Ph.D. in Performance Studies. 

 

Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021) for her current film project with Annie Sprinkle, Playing with Fire, an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission (2022), a Fleishhacker Foundation grant (2022) and the publication of Assuming the Ecosexual Position— the Earth as Lover published by the University of Minnesota Press. In 2021 the Library of Congress Subject Heading created an “authority record” for “ecosexuality,” 

Stephens’ work has been featured in the Sierra Club Magazine, eco/art/scot/land,CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle and in books such as WANWU I, by Zheng Bo, and The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. Harvard University’s Schlessinger Library acquired Stephens’ archives in 2022. She teaches, lectures, exhibits art, screens films, and performs nationally and internationally most recently in exhibitions such as the Midwest Biennale in Minnesota, Manifesta 14 in Kosovo, the Kansas City Art Institute, Performance Space, New York and at the Salzburg Summer Art Academy.

Ph.D. UC Davis, 2015

M.F.A., Rutgers University

B.F.A Tufts University

Diploma, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Honors, Awards and Grants

  • Guggenheim Fellowship
  • Eureka Fellowship
  • Rydel Fellowship

Selected Recordings

Water Makes Us Wet: an Ecosexual Adventure

Goodbye Gauley Mountain: an Ecosexual Love Story

Teaching Interests

  • Environmental Art and Social Practice
  • Queer Arts
  • Postporns