K. Octavia Davis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Writing, Institute for Core Studies
First-Year Writing Program, Institute for Writing Studies
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California, San
Diego, 1998
daviso@stjohns.edu
As a teacher, I see my students as writers with personal,
communal, academic, and professional aspirations. I work to build
on their expertise in communication, information literacy, and
critical thinking by creating activities and assignments relevant
to their individual concerns and plans. Drawing on the work of
postcolonial studies and composition, I see issues of identity and
power as central to written communication and seek to engage
students in analyses that connect their personal experiences to
larger social issues. In other words, I try to make our writing and
discussions part of an overall education committed to ethical
activism.
As a writer, I work primarily in academic and creative prose. My
scholarly writing most recently focuses on how scientific
understandings of gender and race shaped the lived experiences of
women in late nineteenth-century Britain. In my creative writing, I
explore issues of race, class, and gender through memoir and
fiction as a way to participate in the reshaping of dominant
discourses. Currently, I am researching the history of alternative
education and writing pedagogy, as well as the writings of home
school proponents, to advocate for greater student involvement in
curriculum development at all levels.