About Dr. Dennis Stevens
Dr. Dennis Stevens, a veteran and Columbia University–trained artist/educator, is the founder of the Sempergeist Institute and author of The Sacred Descent of the Warrior. His current focus, Warrior’s Return, helps veterans heal through art, storytelling, and community.
I’m a U.S. Coast Guard veteran, visual artist, and author with a Doctor of Education in art and art education, the college teaching of art, from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
I am the author of Sacred Descent of the Warrior and the founder of the Sempergeist Institute, which currently operates as Conway Cultural Development Corporation. This nonprofit research and practice center is dedicated to healing through art, storytelling, and narrative exploration.
I am currently focused on advancing two connected projects, Poewell and Warrior’s Return:
Poewell enables emotionally cogent generative AI via an API, transforming feelings and personal stories into meaningful digital images, poems, and creative artifacts, enabling expressive and therapeutic experiences across platforms.
Warrior’s Return is a visual storytelling platform I have developed to enable veterans to transform their personal experiences into meaningful digital artworks through structured storytelling and AI-powered creative tools.
In my work as a civic designer, I explore the hybrid intersections of AI, democracy, governance, technology, and moral architecture; I'm the thought-leader and steward behind agoradao.eth on the Blockchain, publishing also at mirror.xyz/agoradao.eth. Additionally, I am the originating author of the operative Wikipedia definition of ordered liberty.
Dennis can be reached via: contact @ poewell.com
Example Digital, Narrative Artworks by Dennis Stevens, Ed.D., created via Warrior's Return platform
About Sempergeist Institute
Sempergeist Institute (Conway Cultural Development Corporation, EIN: 47-5065116) uses creative placemaking to strengthen communities by translating frontier artificial intelligence (AI) into trauma-informed healing tools for veterans and service communities. Our platform Warrior's Return uses AI-powered storytelling and image generation to help those navigating PTSD, CPTSD, and moral injury transform internal experiences into visual narratives, processed in peer-facilitated cohorts.
We bridge Silicon Valley innovation and VSO/VA infrastructure, developing the field's first therapeutic AI protocols with HIPAA compliance, crisis integration, and evidence-based outcomes, making advanced creative technologies accessible through trusted veteran service channels.
Memoir of an Esteemed Dipterian
In Memoir of an Esteemed Dipteran, Dennis Stevens, Ed.D., writes under a nom de guerre, reclaiming Kafka’s “vermin” as a philosopher– the Musca domestica incarnate. I wrote this book as a companion to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. This modern reflection reimagines Gregor’s name through the eyes of a proud housefly, offering a counterpoint in perspective.
Where Kafka’s human awakens to despair, this Samsa meets transformation with wit, wonder, and celebration, revealing that even the briefest life can find meaning in motion, gratitude, and the sheer act of being. In his brief twenty-two-day existence, the reflective insect, Samsa the Second, confronts danger, desire, and the absurdity of survival, transforming his tiny life into a meditation on freedom, faith, and futility.
Blending memoir, allegory, and philosophy, Memoir of an Esteemed Dipteran offers a poetic, existential mirror to the human condition, one that stands in deliberate juxtaposition to Kafka’s original Gregor Samsa.
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