David A. Davis, Ph.D.

David A. Davis, Ph.D., is director of University Honors, director of Fellowships and Scholarships, professor of English, and associate director of the Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies. He is the author of Driven to the Field: Sharecropping and Southern Literature and World War I and Southern Modernism. He edited reprints of Victor Daly’s novel Not Only War: A Story of Two Great Conflicts and John L. Spivak’s novel Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang, he co-edited Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways, and he edited a special issue of South: A Scholarly Journal on teaching and activism in Southern studies and a special double issue of Mississippi Quarterly on William Faulkner and World War I. He has published more than 40 articles and book chapters on Southern literature and cultural studies, and he is currently writing a book on food and power in the U.S. South.

Education

• Ph.D., English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• M.A., English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• B.A., English and Philosophy, Emory University

Specialty

American literature, Southern literature, cultural studies

Professional Interests

Davis studies American literature, Southern literature, modernist literature, and cultural studies. He has published extensively on World War I, William Faulkner, labor studies, incarceration, cotton, and foodways. He teaches courses in American literature, Southern literature, and literary theory. He is currently writing a book on food and biopower in Southern literature and editing a collection of essays on cotton and modernity.

Recent Publications

• Editor. Bale after Bale: How Cotton Defined the Twentieth-Century South. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2026.
• Driven to the Field: Sharecropping and Southern Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023.
• World War I and Southern Modernism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017.
• Co-editor with Tara Powell. Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Foodways and Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.
• Editor. Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang by John L. Spivak. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012.
• Editor. Not Only War: A Story of Two Great Conflicts by Victor R. Daly. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.

View Davis’ curriculum vitae.

Contact David A. Davis

478-301-2358
davis_da@mercer.edu
Office: Wiggs Hall, Room 219