Dennis Stevens is a New York City-based visual artist, researcher, educator and media technologist. He has a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree in Art and Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University; a Master of Arts (M.A.) Degree in Instructional Technology from the Connie L. Lurie College of Education at San Jose State University and an undergraduate Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree from the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities at Clemson University. Before going to college, Dennis served as a Gunner’s Mate in the U.S. Coast Guard. He was born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Dennis’ dissertation, titled The Aesthetics of the American Dream: Experiencing the Visual as Meaning Beyond Truth, offers an interpretive approach to meaning with respect to American political opinion and explores American intellectual history as a historical anthropology of ideas. His research trajectory is set within the interdisciplinary context of human affairs and he is interested in how the visual, the literary and the musical can animate understanding with respect to the historical, the anthropological and the psychological.
MoreDennis is currently developing a branded, video content stream for the web which will offer a new form of deliberative journalism through public affairs programming to an American audience. This research agenda, which is an outgrowth of his dissertation, involves an engagement with the changing technological landscape for streaming video that is offering new opportunities for audience engagement via social media applications, smart TV platforms and digital media receivers.
Dennis has taught as an adjunct professor within the Art Department at Queens College and as an instructor within the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University.
He has written extensively about the social construction of knowledge within studio craft movement as well as about the emergence of D.I.Y./indie craft. Since 1998, he has been producing videos and exploring various forms of multimedia as an independent producer relevant to his interests and expertise in studio craft. From 2004 to 2008, he wrote about the various fields of craft on a blog called Redefining Craft.
In 2006, Dennis moved to New York to pursue his doctoral work and prior to that, he worked for three years and a half years as the ceramics and glass technician for the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University (SJSU). He has also founded two gallery/studio businesses; one in Berkeley, CA and one in Conway, SC. As an undergraduate art major, he attended both Ringling College of Art and Design and Clemson University.
While on active duty as a Gunner’s Mate in the U.S. Coast Guard, he worked as a military police officer, maintained weapons systems, taught people how to handle firearms and helped conduct drug interdiction operations, fisheries patrols and illegal migrant repatriations. He was honorably discharged from the Coast Guard as Second-Class Petty Officer (E-5).
