Cathy Davidson

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Cathy N. Davidson (b. 1949) received her B.A. from Elmhurst College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She also has done postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago and was presented with Honorary Doctorates from Elmhurst College and Northwestern University.^[1] She has served as the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English at Duke University since 1996, as well as serving in leadership roles in a variety of organizations and having authored or edited eighteen books. Her most recent research and work focuses on interdisciplinarity and the innovative applications of new technologies and Web 2.0.^[2]

[edit] Experience and work

Davidson served as the first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University from 1998 to 2006, in which capacity she had administrative responsibility for over sixty research programs operating between and among Duke’s nine academic and professional schools.^[2] From July 2006 through June 2007, she served as the Interim Director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and is now the Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, as well as the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English. Davidson is also on the Board of Advisors to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Digital Media and Learning" initiative. She is a former President of the American Studies Association and former editor of the journal American Literature.^[3]

She continues to lecture and consult widely on interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and innovative learning-applications of new technologies, and has recently begun work tracing the social history of the scientific and educational categories "disabled" and "gifted" ^[4]

Davidson also co-founded the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, or HASTAC ("haystack"; http://www.hastac.org), with David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). HASTAC is an international consortium of leading humanities organizations and science/technology institutes, of educators and digital visionaries committed to the creative use and critical understanding of new technologies in life, learning, and society.^[4]

Davidson's Cat in the Stack blog appears on the HASTAC website. She posts frequently about the social and educational implications of next-generation technologies, such as Wikipedia.^[5] The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article written by Davidson in which she asserts that Wikipedia should be used to teach students about the concepts of reliability and credibility.^[6]

[edit] Books and publications

Davidson is the author or editor of eighteen books. Among the most recent is Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (a collaboration with documentary photographer Bill Bamberger), recipient of the Mayflower Cup Award for Non-Fiction. The photographs from Closing traveled to museums around the U.S. for four years, including to the Smithsonian Museum of American History where the exhibit was viewed by over three million visitors.^[4] Other recent publications include: Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (Oxford, 1986), Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Hopkins, 1989), The Book of Love: Writers and Their Love Letters (Pocket/Simon and Schuster, 1992), Thirty-Six Views of Mount Funi: On Finding Myself in Japan (Dutton/Penguin, 1993), and, with Linda Wagner-Martin, The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995) and The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States (1995).^[7]

She served as General Editor of the Oxford University Press Early American Women Writers Series and, with Ada Norris, edited American Indian Stories, Legends and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa, the first Penguin Classic devoted to a Native American author. Along with David Theo Goldberg, she has recently posted a first-draft of “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age” on the collaborative experimental website of the Institute for the Future of the Book (http://www.futureofthebook.org).^[3] Davidson and Goldberg will synthesize this into a multimedia web publication as well as into a traditional book publication sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.

Davidson is also at work on a book on Olaudah Equiano, an eighteenth-century former slave, writer, and abolitionist. Her Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself is forthcoming in Novel.^[4]