Education:
M.A., Ph.D., Indiana University - 2000 (English - American Literature)
B.A., Oberlin College - 1990 (English)
Areas of Expertise:
Davis is primarily intersted in the relationship between literature and social history in the United States. His recent research extends into questions of diasporic, or transnational, racial identity and literature.
Books and Publications
"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: Chapter) 2013
Eric Walrond, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Caribbean Diaspora. Columbia University Press. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 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: 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: 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: Peer Reviewed Article) 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: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009
"The World's Columbian Exposition." Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History. Oxford University Press. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 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: Other Article) 2009
"The Art of Grieving: Colm Toibim's The Master" (book review). Death Studies 32: 181-87. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2008
Commerce in Color: Race, Consumer Culture, and American Literature, 1893-1933. University of Michigan Press. (Books and Publications: Book) 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: Peer Reviewed Article) 2002
"Solid, Liquid, or Gas? Race as a State of Matter in The American Scene." Henry James Review 21.3, November. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2000
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
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
"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
Member-at-large, Executive Committee, Collective Bargaining Congress, American Association of University Professors. (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
Member, Brooklyn College Executive Committee, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY. 2007
