sociology and anthropology

Lester M. Jones Professor of Sociology
331 Asbury Hall
Phone: (765) 658-4518
E-mail: ndavis@depauw.edu  
Vita

Nancy Davis studied at the University of Wisconsin where she changed majors four times before settling on Sociology. She spent a junior year abroad in West Africa where she studied at the University of Ghana and taught English at a girls’ reformatory in Accra. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology, with a minor in Economics, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then joined the faculty at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 1982, she came to DePauw.

She teaches courses in Sociology, Conflict Studies, and Women’s Studies, including in social movements; sexuality, culture, and power; social theory; and cultural conflict in American society. She has taught a seminar on West European social movements in Freiburg Germany as part of a DePauw program there and has published several articles on teaching, including articles on emotional labor in the classroom, capstone courses in sociology, and teaching about inequality.

Professor Davis’ research has centered on perceptions of gender inequality in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, and the US; women in the class structure; and cultural conflict between orthodox religionists and modernists in the US and Western Europe. In 1997-1998, she spent a sabbatical year in France and Italy, studying Italian at the Istituto Zambler in Venice and French at the Forum Accord in Paris. While on sabbatical, she and her partner, Rob Robinson of Indiana University, presented a lecture on cultural conflict at the Universitá degli Studi di Padova and worked on a comparative study of orthodox religionists, modernists, and political belief in Western Europe. That work was subsequently published in the American Journal of Sociology, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociology of Religion

Professor Davis has served on the editorial board of the American Journal of Sociology, on grant review panels for the National Science Foundation, as a grant writing facilitator for the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), and as a faculty mentor for the Preparing Future Faculty program. At DePauw, she was one of the founders of the Women’s Studies program, Chair of the Sociology & Anthropology department for more years than she cares to remember, and active in attempts to create a more inclusive faculty and student body.

In her spare time, she enjoys international travel, Sue Grafton mysteries, and her two cats, neither of which is named after a sociologist.