Stafford Grégoire earned his Baccalaureate at Hunter College (1992) and his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley (May 2004). His specialization is in Nineteenth Century African American and American Literature.  He is revising his dissertation, Blacks Seeing Seeing Blacks: Surveillance and The Gaze in the Works of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William Wells Brown for publication.  This work explores the nexus between Foucault’s theory of surveillance and Lacan’s refinement of the theories of the Gaze.  He is interested in the depiction of the visual forces of the “look,” “the gaze,” or surveillance, which reify the status of African Americans as diminished beings.

Currently he is an Assistant Professor at LaGuardia Community College CUNY and working on a newer, though still related field, Hip-Hop Fiction or contemporary African American crime novels.  He has recently presented two papers on the subject in New Mexico and The Bronx.  “Hip-Hop Scribes: Uncomfortable Truths in Black on White” examined the creation of a new genre of African American or Black Literature outside of the confines of mainstream publishing.  “Hip-Hop Scribes: Double-Consciousness Double-Crossed” examines how this new genre is, because of its unique genesis, able to transgress the DuBoisian paradigm of “self-consciousness” in African American Belle Lettres.

• Previous Academic Honors:
• Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award (1998-1999)
• Summer Mellon Fellowship (1995)
• Graduate Opportunity Fellowship (1992-1994)
• Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowship (1990-1992)