UCSD Communication | People | Graduate Students

UCSD Communication | People | Graduate Students | Patricia Davis

Name:	Patricia Davis p1davis@ucsd.edu
Education:	Ph.D. candidate, UCSD Communication Department, 2002—present
Disertation:	My dissertation examines the communicative institutions and practices imbricated in the construction of an emergent black southern identity centered on collective memories of slavery and the Civil War. Specifically, I analyze the ways in which African Americans utilize Civil War reenactment, history museums, and digital media to construct a sense of belonging to the South and its historically significant places and institutions, producing and reproducing this subjectivity through these systems of representation.
Research Interests:	Affiliated Research Interests: history, memory, and popular culture, performance studies, visual and material culture, representation of identity and trauma, race and gender in popular culture, masculinity, feminist theory (particularly the feminisms of women of color), semiotics
Publication:	“Birth of a Besieged Nation: Discourses of Victimhood in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation” In Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in 19th Century Journalism (forthcoming, Purdue University Press)
Fellowships and Awards:	University of California President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, 2008- 2009 Research Fellowship, Virginia Historical Society, 2008 Northeast Consortium for Diversity Visiting Dissertation Fellow, Northeastern University, 2007-2008. University of California, San Diego Freida Daum Urey Endowed Fellowship, 2007 American Studies Association Travel Grant 2007 Department of Communication Dissertation Writing Grant, 2007 University of California, San Diego African and African American Studies Research Project Outstanding Graduate Student Award, 2007 University of California, San Diego Dean’s Social Sciences Research Travel Grant, 2007 University of California, San Diego; San Diego Fellowship for Graduate Studies, 2002-2004
Presentations:	“Now We are Men: African American Civil War Reenactment, Historical Agency, and the Performance of Masculinity” (accepted) Annual Meeting, National Communication Association, San Diego, California, November 2008 “Commemorative Places, Political Spaces: Monacan Indians, African Americans, and Virginia’s Jamestown Celebration.” (accepted) Annual Meeting, American Studies Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 2008 “Marching Toward a Usable Past: African American Civil War Reenactment, Historical Agency, and the Performance of Masculinity.” Annual Meeting, Cultural Studies Association, New York, NY, May 2008 “Collective Memory and Black Southern Identity.” Invited talk, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA, May 2008 “The Uncivil War: Collective Memory and Black Southern Identity.” Annual Meeting, the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, November 2007 “Performing Black History, Constructing Black Agency: Collective Memory and African American Civil War Reenactment.” Public Memory and Ethnicity Conference, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR, October 2007. “Blue, Gray, and Black: African American Civil War Reenactments as Performance of Southern Identity.” Annual Meeting, the American Studies Association, Philadelphia, PA, October 2007. “Performing Collective Memories, Performing Black Southern Identities,” Annual Conference, Center for the Study of Citizenship, Wayne State University, Detroit MI, March 2007. “Birth of a Besieged Nation: Discourses of Victimhood and D.W. Griffith’s Racial Project.” Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression, Chattanooga, TN, November 2005. Outstanding Student Paper Award.

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