Stephen got his B.A. from Trent University, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. His Ph.D. thesis was on sexuality in the works of Christopher Marlowe. Stephen taught at both Trent and the University of Toronto before teaching at the University of British Columbia from 1995 until 1999 (and at Simon Fraser University in the fall of 1998).

Stephen taught at the University of Calgary from 1999 until 2003, when he returned to Vancouver to take up a position as assistant professor in the department of English at the University of British Columbia. He received the Ian Fairclough Memorial Teaching Award from the department of English at UBC in 1998 and an honourable mention in 2002 in the University of Calgary Student Union's Teaching Excellence Award competition. Stephen is author of Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in Renaissance Literature.