Dr. David A. Davis
Professor of English
Associate Director of the Spencer B. King, Jr., Center for Southern Studies
Director of Fellowships and Scholarships
Dr. David A. Davis is 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 has published more than 40 articles and book chapters, 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, and co-edited Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways. He also 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 is chair of the Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature committee, faculty advisor to the Stamps Scholars Program, and editor of The Malcolm Lester Phi Beta Kappa Lectures on Liberal Arts and Public Life.
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
Dr. 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
- Driven to the Field: Sharecropping and Southern Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023.
- “Class and Economics.” The Routledge Companion to Southern Literature. Edited by Monica Miller, Katherine Burnett, and Todd Hagstette. New York: Routledge, 2022. 24-27.
- “Interview with Leanne Howe and Robbie Etheridge.” Conversations with Leanne Howe. Edited by Kirstin L. Squint. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2022. 29-39.
- “Since Time: S-Town and the Problem of Southern Temporality.” Remediating Region: New Media and the U.S. South. Edited by Lisa Hinrichsen, Gina Caison, and Stephanie Rountree. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. 47-69.
- “African American Literature, Citizenship, and War, 1863-1932.” War and American Culture. Edited by Jennifer Haytock. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 166-179.
- “William Faulkner and World War I.” Mississippi Quarterly 72.4 (Winter 2021): 435-446.
- “In the South: Three Mississippi Writers and the Great War Mobilization.” The Cambridge History of American Great War Literature and Culture. Edited by Mark Van Wienen and Tim Dayton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 271-282.
- “God’s Little Acre and Southern Spectacle.” Southern Studies, 28.2 (Fall/Winter 2021): 3-22.
- “Miss Amelia’s Liquor: Surrealism and the Construction of the South.” Southern Comforts: Essays on Alcohol and Southern Studies. Edited by Matthew Dischinger and Conor Pickens. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020.
- “William Faulkner.” American Literary Scholarship, 2020 (1): 143–156.
- “Faulkner’s War Stories: World War I Fiction and the Emergence of Yoknapatawpha.” Mississippi Quarterly 73.1 (Fall 2020): 17–34.
- “Faulkner’s Stores: Microfinance and Economic Power in the Postbellum South.” Faulkner and Money. Edited by Jay Watson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. 156-168.
- “Modernism, Primitivism, and Food in James Agee’s Cotton Tenants.” Modernism and Food Studies: Politics, Aesthetics, and the Avant-Garde. Edited by Phillip Geheber, Adam Farjado, and Jessica Martell. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019. 166-181.
- “Innocent of Any Time: Modern Temporality and the Problem of Southern Poverty.” American Studies 57.4 (2019) 91-110.
- “‘A Sack of Bananas’: As I Lay Dying and Hemispheric Plantation Modernity.” Faulkner Journal, 32.2 (Fall 2018): 135-150.
- “#southernsyllabus: Teaching and Activism in Southern Studies.” south: a scholarly journal 50.2 (Fall 2018): 1-8.
- “A Good Mayonnaise is Hard to Find: Flannery O’Connor and Culinary Codependency.” Southern Quarterly 56.1 (Fall 2018): 29-41.
- World War I and Southern Modernism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017.
View Dr. Davis’ curriculum vitae.