Dr. Michael J. Davey
1200 North Court Street
Quitman, GA 31643
o (229) 333-7338
h (229) 263-6562
1998 Ph. D., English, the Ohio State University
1994 M.A., English, the Ohio State University
1989 B.A., English and Philosophy, Binghamton University (SUNY)
Dissertation
Convention, Progression, and Romance: History and Form in the Study of the American Antebellum Novel
For most of the twentieth century, conventional wisdom held that historical approaches to literary study were incompatible with the formalist approaches of New Critics, structuralists, and other critics interested in formal analysis. In my dissertation, however, I draw on recent rhetorical theories of narrative to show that formal and historical studies are not incommensurable and can in fact be used to bring the complex interdependence among a text and its contexts into sharp relief. Rather than approach this issue abstractly, I address this theoretical focus in concrete terms by investigating recent reformulations of the romance theory of the American novel, arguing that it has not accurately described the diverse forms the novel took in the US in the antebellum period. Drawing on the work of Michael Davitt Bell, Nina Baym, James Phelan and others, I reexamine the respective reception and cultural work of novels by Cooper, Hawthorne and Melville, showing that the distinction between realism and romance as it is used to distinguish between British and American fiction in this era does not adequately account for the synchronic and diachronic development of extended prose narrative from the period. My conclusion is that the use of the term Romance should be abandoned in favor of some as-yet-to-be-determined theory of the American novel.
Publications
Editor, A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or the Whale Forthcoming September, 2003 Routledge UK
“Reading Susan, Reading Ruth: Audience, Response, and the Historical Hermeneutics of Rural Hours.” Susan Fenimore Cooper: New Critical Essays on Rural Hours and Other Works. Eds. Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson. Athens and London: U of Georgia P, 2001.
“Convention and the Limits of Biography for Literary Criticism: Fathers, Daughters, and Sentiment in Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans.” James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art. Papers from the 1999 International James Fenimore Cooper Conference, State University of New York College at Oneonta. Oneonta, N.Y.: James Fenimore Cooper Society and the College at Oneonta, 2000.
“Plainly Bred in the Woods: Manners as Mode in The Pioneers.” James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art. Papers from the 1997 International James Fenimore Cooper Conference, State University of New York College at Oneonta. Oneonta, N.Y.: James Fenimore Cooper Society and the College at Oneonta, 1999.
Papers Read
“Teaching Moby-Dick in an Increasingly Non-Print Age.” The International Melville Conference: Moby-Dick 2001, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York, October 18-20 2001
“Historicizing Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Works: A Roundtable Discussion.” First International Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, San Antonio, Texas, February 14-18, 2001.
Panel Chair, “The Rise of Professional Authorship: Don’t Give up Your Day Job.” Writing Across Time and the Region: The Western Reserve as Muse, October 13-14, 2000, Case Western Reserve University Western Reserve Studies Symposium.
“Beyond the Theory of the American Romance: The Last of the Mohicans and the American Novel Tradition.” Annual Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland College of the State University of New York, October 1997.
“For an old bitch gone in the teeth’: How The Dial Created a Canon.” Midwestern Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, November 1996
Works in Progress
Book manuscript: Readers Reading Class: Antebellum Reader-Response and the Rise of Social Hierarchy. A study of how the rise of class formations affected nineteenth-century hermeneutics as well as an attempt to construct a diachronic narrative of the history of the representation of social hierarchy in American fictional narrative, 1790 to 1860.
Teaching Appointments
Assistant Professor, Valdosta State University, 2002-present
Visiting Assistant Professor, John Carroll University, 2000-2002
Adjunct Assistant Professor, John Carroll University, 1998-2000
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Cleveland State University, 1998-2000
Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, 1992-1998
Courses Taught
VSU: Engl 1101, 1102, 1102H, 2140, 4210/6000, 4220/6000
Major American Writers
Colonial and US Literature to 1865 (lower- and upper-level)
American Literature After the Civil War
Introduction to Fiction and Drama
Advanced Composition
Introduction to Academic Research and Writing I and II
Composition and Rhetoric I
Composition and Rhetoric II (First-year writing using imaginative literature)
Intermediate Composition: The American Experience in Literature
Intermediate Composition: The American Experience in History and Popular Culture
Academic Service
Graduate Studies Committee, Valdosta State University 2003-present
Recruitment, Retention and Technology Committee, Valdosta State University 2002-present
Webmaster, Department of English, 2002-present
Undergraduate Advisory Committee, John Carroll University, 2000-2002
Subcommittee on Technology, John Carroll University, 2001-2002
Organizing Committee, Case Western Reserve University Conference on Writers of the Western Reserve, 1999-2000
Freshman English Policy Committee, Cleveland State University, 1999-2000
First-Year English Policy Committee, The Ohio State University, 1993-1995
Ombud, First-Year Writing Program, The Ohio State University, 1996-97
Assistant to the Graduate Chair, The Ohio State University, 1997
Technical Writer, The Computer and Information Science Department, The Ohio State University, 1995-1998
Teaching and Research Interests
Early and Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Literary and Material History of the Nineteenth Century
Antebellum Print Culture
Narrative Theory
The Novel
Critical Theory
Modernism
Honors, Fellowship, and Scholarships
Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, The Ohio State University, 1998
Summer Research Fellowship, The Ohio State University, 1997
Teaching Assistant, Ohio State University, 1992-1998
References
Sharon Gravett, English, Valdosta State University
Jeanne Colleran, English, John Carroll University
Debra J. Rosenthal, English, John Carroll University
Duncan Wu, Oxford University
James P. Phelan, English, The Ohio State University
Steven Fink, English, The Ohio State University
Elizabeth Renker, English, The Ohio State University