DOUG DAVIS

Gordon College

Division of Humanities

419 College Drive

Barnesville, GA 30204

678.359.5817 / ddavis@gdn.edu

 

CURRENT POSITION

Associate Professor of English, Division of Humanities, Gordon College

 

EDUCATION

Ph.D. Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, May 2003

M.A. English, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, January 1995

B.A. English, Magna cum Laude, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, May 1990

 

GRANTS, HONORS AND AWARDS

National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, “Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor” Summer Institute, 2007

Faculty Development Grant, 2006, 2008

Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellowship, 2001-2004

Society for Social Studies of Science Nicholas Mullins Award for Outstanding Graduate Essay, 2002

Schaeffer Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2000

Society for Literature and Science Edward Bruns Award for Outstanding Graduate Essay, 1999

Carnegie Mellon University Adamson Awards for Outstanding Academic Writing, 1996, 1997, 1998

Dean’s Letter of Commendation for Undergraduate Teaching, 1997, 1998, 1999

Invited Participant, Mellon Foundation Summer Seminar on Critical Theories of Objectivity, 1996

Phi Beta Kappa, 1990

 

DISSERTATION

Strategic Fictions: Crisis, Invention, and Discovery in the American Narratives of Nuclear Defense

Director: David Shumway, Carnegie Mellon University

Committee: Brian McHale, Ohio State University; Kathleen Newman, Carnegie Mellon University

 

PUBLICATIONS

“Queer as AI: Alan Turing and the Science Fiction of Machine Intelligence.” Co-written with Lisa Yaszek. Forthcoming in Extrapolation.

 

“Teaching The Nuclear Age in the Second Nuclear Age.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Tim O’Brien.

Ed. Alex Vernon. Modern Language Association Press, Forthcoming 2009.

 

“Shiftlet’s Choice: Flannery O’Connor’s Fordist Economy of Love.” Flannery O’Connor in Our Time. Eds. Avis Hewitt and Robert Donahoo. University of Tennessee Press, Forthcoming 2009.

 

“Grace in the Machine: Technology and Transfiguration in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction.” The Flannery O’Connor Review 7 (Forthcoming 2009).

 

Reading Science Fiction’s Interdisciplinary Conversation with Science and Technology Studies.” Co-authored with Lisa Yaszek. Reading Science Fiction. Ed. Marleen Barr. Palgrave Press, Forthcoming 2008.

 

“Thomas D Clareson Awards Presentation.” Co-written with Bruce Rockwood. SFRA Review. Forthcoming.

 

Science Fiction Narratives of Mass Destruction and the Politics of National Security.New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction. Eds. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox. University of South Carolina Press, 2008. 173-186.

 

“Anthology of O’Connor Tribute Stories Planned.” Cheers! The Flannery O’Connor Society Newsletter 15.1 (Spring/Summer 2008): 6.

 

“Everything that Concerns O’Connor Must Converge—on Milledgeville.” Cheers! The Flannery O’Connor Society Newsletter 14.3 (Fall 2007): 1, 4.

 

“Future-War Storytelling: American Policy and Popular Film.” Rethinking Global Security: Media, Popular Culture, and the War on Terror. Eds. Patrice Petro and Andrew Martin. Rutgers University Press, 2006. 13-44.

 

“‘One Hundred Million Hydrogen Bombs’: Total War in the Fossil Record.” Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science and Technology 9.3 (Fall 2001): 461-508.

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Review of Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture. Patrick B. Sharp. SFRA Review. Forthcoming.

 

Review of Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda Setting in American and British Speculative Fiction. Charles E. Gannon. Science Fiction Studies. Forthcoming.

 

Review of Rolling Thunder. John Varley. SFRA Review 284 (Spring 2008): 16-17.

 

Review of Socialism and Democracy, “Socialism and Social Critique in Science Fiction” special issue. Victor Wallis and Alcena Rogan, eds. New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 30.1 (March 2008): 122-125.

 

Review of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology. Eds. James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. Science Fiction Studies 34 (2007): 346-349.

 

Review of Red Lightning. John Varley. SFRA Review 276 (April/May/June 2006): 29-30.

 

Review of A User’s Guide to the Millennium: Essays and Reviews. J.G. Ballard. SFRA Review 223 (May/June 1996): 27-28.

 

Review of Functions of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Thirteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Ed. Joe Sanders. SFRA Review 222 (March/April 1996): 23-27.

 

Review of Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Ed. David Lavery. SFRA Review 218 (July/August 1995): 11-12.

 

 

INTERVIEWS AND INVITED PRESENTATIONS

Interview about the Science Fiction Research Association, The Sci-Fi Lab podcast, WREK radio, August 2008

 

Invited Lecturer, Literature and Democracy Summer Seminar, “Writers on Writing” Module, New Jersey Council of the Humanities, July 2008

 

Presenter, Thomas D. Clareson Award Speech, Science Fiction Research Association International Conference/Campbell Awards Banquet, July 2008.

 

Invited Panelist, New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction Roundtable, Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, July 2008.

 

Invited Panelist, Reading Science Fiction Roundtable, Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, July 2008.

 

Invited Panelist, Technoculture and Science Fiction Roundtable, International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 2008.

 

Invited Panelist, Teaching Science Fiction Roundtable International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 2008.

 

Interview about Researching Flannery O’Connor, Macon Telegraph, July 2007.

 

Invited speaker, director’s commentary for Cartoon Network program, Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD Volume 4, October 2005.

 

Invited speaker, “The Machine and the Grotesque in the Short Fiction of Flannery O’Connor.” Monstrous Bodies in Science, Fiction, and Culture Symposium. Georgia Institute of Technology, April 2005.

 

Invited Panelist, Running Tutorials Roundtable. Mid-Atlantic Council of Tutorial Coordinators, March 1999.

 

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

“Material Culture, Revelatory Imagery, and the Politics of Containment in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction.” American Literature Association American Fiction Symposium, October 2008.

 

“Christian Fabulation for American Technoculture: The Sacred and the Profane in the Short Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Ted Chiang.” Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, July 2008.

 

“Flannery, Faulkner and Ford (Cars): Human and Posthuman Conditions in the Southern Renaissance and Beyond.” The Stories of Flannery and Faulkner, March 2008.

 

Science Fiction Narratives of Mass Destruction and the Politics of National Security.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, November 2007.

 

“Flannery O’Connor’s Homecoming and the Literature of Historical Change.” Southern Women Writers Conference, September 2007.

 

“Devolution and Animality in Jack London’s Dog Stories.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, November 2006. (Also served as panel chair.)

 

“On the Origins and Uses of Slipstream Fiction.” Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, June 2006.

 

“Remembering Violence Properly: Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers and the Geopolitics of Memory.” International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, April 2006.

 

“Atomic Minimalism: John Adams, Classical Music, and the Popular Memory of Apocalypse.” International Joint Conference of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, March 2006.

 

“‘At the Perilous Crossroads of Radicalism and Technology’: The New Art of 9/11.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 2006. (Also served as panel chair.)

 

“The Intersection of Race, Grace, and Technology in Flannery O’Connor’s New World.” Southern Women Writers Conference, September 2005.

 

“George W. Bush, SF Grand Master? Science Fiction and the Poetics of National (In)security.” Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, June 2005.

 

“Tales of Mass Destruction in American National Policy.” Gordon College Studies in the Humanities Academic Group, March 2005.

 

“Race, Grace, and Technology: Reading Flannery O’Connor in the New South.” Gordon College Studies in the Humanities Academic Group, February 2005.

 

“Look Back in Wonder: Postmodernist Fabulation vs. The Bush Doctrine.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 2004. (Also served as panel chair.)

 

“The Artifactual World of Flannery O’Connor.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 2004. (Also served as panel chair.)

 

“Containing California in Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Or, How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Cold War.” Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, June 2003.

 

“Queer as AI: Alan Turing, the Enablements of Queer Subjectivity, and the Creation of a New Science.” Co-presented with Lisa Yaszek. Society for Social Studies of Science International Conference, November 2002. (Also presented at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, November 2002.)

 

“Hollywood Doomsday Machines: Visual Narrative and the Political Culture of the Cold War.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 2001.

 

 “Make Love, Not War: Winning Consent for Nuclear Policy in Hollywood Film.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 2001.

 

“Wandering Targets on the Homefront: Reading Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut in the Cold War.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 2001. (Also served as panel chair.)

 

“Paleontology and Superpower Politics.” Conference on Cold War Science, Technology and Medicine: Global Perspectives, November 2000.

 

“Placing Nuclear War Literature in Cold-War Actor Networks.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 1999.

 

“Strategic Fictions: The Meaning of Military Technology in Popular Literature and Film.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 1999.

 

“Narratives of Total War in the Fossil Record.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 1999.

 

“One Hundred Million Hydrogen Bombs: Metaphor and the Invention of a New Theory of Mass Extinction.” Carnegie Mellon Cold War Science and Technology Studies Colloquium, April 1999.

 

“The Strange Attraction of Chaos Theory in the Humanities.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, December 1997. (Also presented at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, November 1997.)

 

“Cultural Studies of Science: Working Against the Disciplines.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, October 1996.

 

“Colonists of the Internet: Network Academic Journals and the Control of Electronic Discourse.”

The Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, July 1994.

 

“The Strange Attraction of Tom Stoppard.” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, April 1994.

 

“Violence and Agency in the Rhetoric of Geological Catastrophism.” The Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, July 1993.

 

COURSES DEVELOPED AND TAUGHT

Division of Humanities, Gordon College, 2004-present

 

Creative Writing

 

Literatures of the 21st Century

 

American Literature I, 1492-1865

 

American Literature II, 1865-Present

 

Introduction to the Humanities

 

Composition 2: Literature and Research

 

Composition 1: Argument and Interpretation

 

Department of Literature, Communication, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001-2004

 

Composition 2: Literature and Research

 

Composition 1: Argument and Interpretation

 

Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University, 1995-2001

 

Literary Modernism and Postmodernism

 

Cold War Literature

 

Science Fiction in Culture

 

Composition

 

Department of English, Temple University, 1993-1995

 

Introduction to College Writing

 

OTHER TEACHING SERVICE

Associate Director and Webmaster, Gordon College Writing Center, 2005-2008

Head Writing Advisor for the Humanities, Carnegie Mellon University Undergraduate Minority Action Project, 1998-2001

ESL Writing Center Advisor, Temple University, 1993-1995

 

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

Professional Contributions

Organizer and Site Host, Science Fiction Research Association International Conference, forthcoming 2009

Committee Member, Thomas D. Clareson Award for Outstanding Lifetime Service to the Science Fiction Research Community, 2007-2010

Essay Reviewer, Social Studies of Science and Studies in Popular Culture

Panel Organizer and Chair, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts International Conference, 2007, 2005, 2004, and 2001

Associate Site Organizer and Session Chair for Monstrous Bodies in Science, Fiction, and Culture, a symposium sponsored by the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, March 2005. Available at <http://monstrousbodies.lcc.gatech.edu>

Postdoctoral Representative and Undergraduate Advisor for the Frankenstein Project, co-sponsored by the Georgia Tech Library and the American Medical Association, 2004. Available at <http://frankenstein.lcc.gatech.edu/>

Literature, Film and Culture Editor, Carnegie Mellon University History Department “Cold War Connection” web site, 1996-1998. Available at <http://www.cmu.edu/coldwar/>

Literature and Science Editor, English Server, 1996-1998. Available at <http://www.eserver.org>

 

Campus Contributions

Honors Program Advisory Council, 2008-present

Faculty Welfare Committee, 2007-present

Honor’s Program Task Force, 2007-2008

Faculty advisor, Gordon College Literary Club and Driftwood Magazine, 2007-2008

Assessment Committee, 2004-2007 (Served as Chair 2005-2006 and Recorder 2004-2005)

Philosophy Search Committee, 2006

Textbook Committee, 2006-present

Instructional Technology Assessment Coordinator, 2005-present

Division Representative, <EMMA> Electronic Mark-up Application Composition Workshop, University of Georgia, 2006

Division Representative, Larry H. Kelley Educational Services Workshop on Embedding Assessment Learning Outcomes in Regularly Scheduled Assignments, Brenau University, 2005

Regents Test Task Force, 2005

Regents Test Faculty Supervisor, 2004-present

Science Olympiad, 2004-present

Academic Contest Test Writer, 2004-present

Logo and Mascot Committee, 2004

Turnitin.com Instruction Guide Author for the Gordon College Website, 2004. Available at <http://www.gdn.edu/departments/computerservices/turnitin.asp>

Brittain Fellow Committee, 2004

LCC Departmental Program Presenter, Student Honors Luncheon, 2004

Georgia State Regents Exam Faculty Grader, 2001-present

Chair, English Department Colloquium, 1999-2000

Summer Teaching Steering Committee, 1997-2000

Head Instructor, English 101 Teacher Training Seminar, 1999

Author, English 101 Assignment and Teaching Manual, 1999

Graduate Committee, 1997-1998

 

OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Partner in DY Consulting, small grant writing company that has secured over $750,000 in grants from NASA, the Department of Energy and other national institutions for independent technology firms, 2002-present

Arts Reviewer for Dialogue, midwest arts monthly, 1999-2000

Head Writer for Terminal Time, an interactive, artificial intelligence history engine developed at the Center for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, 1998. Available at <http:www.terminaltime.com>

Cultural Studies Consultant and Writer for They Came from Planet Axon: The Brain Movie, a National Science Foundation multimedia installation at the Carnegie Museum of Science, Pittsburgh, 1998

Production Assistant, Temple University Press, 1993-1995

Product Manager, Springer-Verlag Scientific Publishers, 1990-1993

Editor-in-Chief, The Mage, 1988-1990

Editorial Assistant, Ecco Press/Anteas magazine, 1989

 

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Association of University Professors

American Culture Association

Carnegie Mellon Cold War Science and Technology Studies Group

Georgia Tutoring Association

International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Modern Language Association  

Science Fiction Research Association

Society for Literature, Science and the Arts

Society for Social Studies of Science

 

LANGUAGES

Read Latin, French, Spanish