• Ph.D., State University of New York, Binghamton, 1974
• Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Northwestern University, 2005
• Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Elmhurst College, 1989
• Postdoctoral study, The University of Chicago, 1975
• M.A., State University of New York, Binghamton, 1973
• B.A., Elmhurst College, 1970

Research Interests:  

Cathy Davidson has published numerous books, including Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (Oxford, 1986; Expanded Edition 2004), 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; New Edition with Afterword, 2006, Duke U Press), 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). In collaboration with photographer Bill Bamberger, her most recent book is Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (Norton, 1998). She is General Editor of the Oxford University Press Early American Women Writers series, past President of the American Studies Association, and past editor of American Literature. She was Duke University (and the nation's) first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies from 1999-2006, and is co-founder of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke. She is also the co-founder of HASTAC ("haystack"), the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory and on the Board of Advisors to the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation "Digital Media and Learning" initiative. Her current research interests include Olaudah Equiano and the controversy over origins, a MacArthur Foundation monograph and collaborative online publication on "The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age" (with David Theo Goldberg), and a study of the culture and neurobiology of "knowing." With Goldberg, Davidson is co-PI of the HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition. She is also the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

Edited Volumes

• Davidson, CN. Strangers on a Train: A Chance Encounter Provides a Lesson in Complicity and the Never- Ending Crisis in the Humanities. Academe: Magazine of the American Association of University Professors, 2013 ().
• Davidson, CN. Changing Higher Education to Change the World (Series of 8 Articles). Fast Company, 2013 ().

• Davidson, CN. "Why Higher Education Demands a Paradigm Shift."  Duke University Press, 2014, 3-11. [doi]
• Davidson, CN. "Humanities and Technology in the Information Age." The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Ed. Frodeman, R; Klein, JT; Mitcha, C. 2013.
• Davidson, C. "Why Education Demands a Paradigm Shift."  2013.