Carol Bunch Davis

Learn more about Carol Bunch Davis

Get To Know Carol Bunch Davis

What in your life drew you to your current field of study?

Observing and engaging many distinctive social spaces during my childhood helped me to see African American culture as a field of study.

What do you hope your students gain from studying or working with you?

That they see themselves in the works we study and that it enables a richer sense of who they are and where they belong.

What are you passionate about in your personal life?

My family.

Education

Ph.D. English, University of Southern California, 2007
M.A. English, University of Houston-Clear Lake, 1998
B.A. Communication, Trinity University, 1990

Courses Taught

MAST 340:  Museums and the Construction of Identities
ENGL 104:  Rhetoric & Composition (TEAM taught/Common Reader)
ENGL 204:  Introduction to African American Literature and Culture

Publications

Prefiguring Postblackness: Cultural Memory, Drama and the African American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. (paperback edition)

“Be Loyal to Yourselves: Jim Crow Segregation, Black Cultural Nationalism & U.S. Cultural Memory” in Critical Insights: Civil Rights, Literature, Past & Present. Christopher Varlack, ed. Amenia, NY: Gray House Press, 2017. 36-52.

Presentations

2016: “Preaching Freedom in the Cottonpatch: Purlie Victorious and the Politics of Representation” European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Biennial Conference. Constanta, Romania, April 22-25.

2016: “Time to Live: Sylvester Outley, Retrieve Prison Farm and the Question of Agency” Popular Culture Association (PCA), African American Culture Panel, Seattle, WA, March 22-25.

2015: “Into the Abyss: Slavery’s Iconography & Temporality in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon” Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) Biennial Conference, Malaga, Spain, June 13-16.

Grants and Fellowships

2018: New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University Monroe Research Fellowship 

2018: TAMU Southeastern Conference Academic Leadership Development Program Fellow (SEC ALDP)

2017: TAMU System Diversity Matters Seed Grant "Civic Literacy, Civil Dialogues and the TAMUG Common Reader'' (co-PI with Dr. JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz)

2016: Fellow Columbia University Summer Teachers and Scholars Institute for Research in African American Studies

2015: Texas A&M System Grant Program to Enhance Scholarly & Creative Activity (PESCA)

2015: Texas A&M at Galveston Administrative Leadership Fellowship in the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs & Chief Academic Officer

2012: Popular Culture Association Marshall Fishwick Travel Award for American Culture/Popular Culture Research

Awards & Recognition

2018: Texas A & M University Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award College Level Award

2016: Finalist, Benjamin Hooks Center for Social Change 2016 National Book Award for Outstanding Book on the Civil Rights Movement and its Legacy Prefiguring Postblackness: Cultural Memory, Drama and the African American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s.

2009: TAMU System Student-Led Award for Teaching Excellence (SLATE)