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James Davis
Professor
English
Location:
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James Davis is currently on leave from faculty duties to serve as President of the Professional Staff Congress, CUNY's faculty-staff union. He teaches in the American Studies Program and the English Department. He is the author of Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean (2015) and Commerce in Color: Race, Consumer Culture, and American Literature, 1893-1933 (2007). He has received the Leon Levy Center for the Study of Biography Fellowship and Brooklyn College's Claire Tow Distinguished Teacher Award and Whiting Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities.
Education:
M.A., Ph.D., Indiana University - 2000 (English - American Literature)
B.A., Oberlin College - 1990 (English)
Areas of Expertise:
American literature, literary theory, literature of immigration, African American studies.
Books and Publications
Review of Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money, Princeton University Press, 2018. Radical Teacher 113 (Winter 2019). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2019
Review of Shannon King, Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism During the New Negro Era (New York University Press, 2015), Journal of American History. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2016
Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean. New York: Columbia University Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2015
Davis, James and Bob Rosen. "Introduction: Teaching About Climate Change." Radical Teacher 102, Summer: 4-7. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2015
"Eric Walrond." The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Franklin W. Knight. Oxford University Press. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2014
Review of The American Academic Profession: Transformation in Contemporary Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). Radical Teacher 99, Spring. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
"A Prism So Strange: The Biography of Eric Walrond." Eric Walrond: A Critical Heritage. Eds. Louis J. Parascandola and Carl A. Wade. University of the West Indies Press. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2013
Davis, James and Louis J. Parascandola. "A West Indian Grows in Brooklyn: The Early American Experiences of Eric Walrond." Eric Walrond: A Critical Heritage. Eds. Louis J. Parascandola and Carl A. Wade. University of the West Indies Press. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2013
"The Redrawn Map of Eric Walrond's Caribbean." Review of In Search of Asylum: the Later Writings of Eric Walrond. S/X Salon 8, February: http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/reviews/. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2012
"There Has Been an Inward Change: In Search of Eric Walrond." Celebrity Star Maps: Celebrity, Modernity, Culture. Eds. Jonathan Goldman and Aaron Jaffe. Ashgate Publishers. (Books and Publications: Book Chapter) 2010
"Confessions of the Flesh: The Mass Public in Epidermal Trouble in Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and George Schuyler's Black No More" (reprint). Short Story Criticism 116: 213-47. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2009
"Ichiro Is a Punk, and Other Lessons from Teaching 'The Immigrant Experience.'" Radical Teacher 84, Special Issue on Immigration and Education, spring. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2009
"The World's Columbian Exposition." Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History. Oxford University Press. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2009
Review of "Look for Me All Around You: Anglophone Caribbean Immigrants in the Harlem Renaissance," by Louis Parascandola (2005), Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 33.1, January: 141-46. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2009
"The Art of Grieving: Colm Toibim's The Master" (book review). Death Studies 32: 181-87. (Books and Publications: Article (Other)) 2008
Commerce in Color: Race, Consumer Culture, and American Literature, 1893-1933. University of Michigan Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Authored)) 2007
"Stage Business as Citizenship: Ida B. Wells at the World's Columbian Exposition." Women's Experience of Modernity: New Voices, New Views, 1875-1945. Eds. Ann Ardis and Leslie Lewis. Johns Hopkins University Press. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2002
"Solid, Liquid, or Gas? Race as a State of Matter in The American Scene." Henry James Review 21.3, November. (Books and Publications: Article (Peer-reviewed)) 2000
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
PSC-CUNY Cycle 51 Traditional A Research Grant ($2,240). (Grants and Fellowships) 2020
Tow Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship. (Grants and Fellowships) 2019
Finalist, Wheatley Book Award, Non-Fiction, Harlem Book Fair. (Awards and Honors) 2016
Recipient, Claire Tow Distinguished Teacher Award, Brooklyn College. (Awards and Honors) 2015
Tow Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009
Fellow, Leon Levy Center for the Study of Biography, CUNY Graduate Center. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
Mrs. Giles Whiting Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities. (Grants and Fellowships) 2005
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums
"Palabras y Banderas: Language, Race, and Nationalism In and Out of the Panama Canal Zone," American Studies Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD, November 2020. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2020
An Accent on Democracy: Bilingualism and Self-Expression in the Panama Canal Zone, American Comparative Literature Association, March 8-10, Georgetown University. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2019
"Clare Kendry, Gorgeous Zombie," Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2017
"Protest Poetry and Subversive Education: Rosey E. Pool's Lecture Tour Through Southern HBCU's," American Studies Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2017
"Shared Governance & the Duties of the Faculty," New York Metro American Studies Summer Professional Development Institute, Columbia University. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2017
"Defending Public Higher Education," American Federation of Teachers Higher Education Annual Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"On Eric Walrond," invitation of Abney Park Cemetery Trust, Stoke Newington Literary Festival, London, England. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"On Eric Walrond," invitation of Wiltshire Library Council, Bradford-on-Avon, England. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"The Multicultural Melancholia of Gentrification Narratives," American Studies Association Annual Conference, Denver, CO. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2016
Interviewed by Alejandra Bronfman, New Books in Caribbean Studies (online). (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2016
"Black and Unknown Bards: An American Performance in Windrush-Era Britain," American Studies Association Annual Conference. Washington, D.C., November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2013
"Panama Pulp: The Magazine Fiction of Eric Walrond." 50/21: Brooklyn College Caribbean Studies Symposium. April 17. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2013
"Chombo, Negro, Coloured: Eric Walrond and the Question of Black Transnationalism." American Comparative Literature Association. Vancouver, British Columbia, April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2011
Panelist, "Open Access Scholarly Publishing as Thought and Action." CUNY Graduate Center. New York, Oct. 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Eric Walrond: Writing Beauty, Race, and Rage Across the Caribbean Diaspora," American Comparative Literature Association conference, Harvard University, March. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009
"Success Story: Writing Brooklyn from Black Britain," American Tropics conference, University of Essex, United Kingdom, July. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009
"The Lowly Offices of Lofty Empire: Commercial Clerks in the Fiction of Eric Walrond," Northeast Modern Language Association conference, Boston University, February. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009
"Hemispheric American Literatures," NEH Summer Seminar, Columbia University. New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"Anticolonial on the River Avon: Eric Walrond's Black British Writing," American Studies Association Conference. Oakland, Calif. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006
Professional Leadership
Elected for four-year term to represent New York State (District VIII) on National Council of American Association of University Professors. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2018
Member-at-large, Executive Committee, Collective Bargaining Congress, American Association of University Professors. Re-elected through 2015. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2011
Editorial board member, Radical Teacher. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2007
Member, executive board, Brooklyn College Center for Teaching. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2006
Other Professional Activities
Davis, James, Richard Ohmann, and Robert Samuels, eds. "Teaching Critical University Studies," special issue of Radical Teacher 108, Spring. 2017
Member, Brooklyn College Executive Committee, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY. 2007
