N. Gregson Davis
Andrew W. Mellon Research Professor of Humanities
My primary field of research in Classical Studies is ancient Greek and Latin poetry, and the focus of my published work has been on the interpretation of the poetry of the Augustan poets, Horace, Vergil and Ovid. I also pursue research in contemporary Caribbean Literature, with special emphasis on the Francophone and Anglophone literary traditions (particularly the poetry of the Martinican, Aimé Césaire, and the St.Lucian, Derek Walcott). My current work explores the interconnections between philosophy (especially ethics) and poetry in Augustan literature.
Office Hours
W 4:30 to 5:30 PM
Office Location Allen 233E
Office Location Allen 233E
Current Appointments & Affiliations
- Andrew W. Mellon Research Professor of Humanities, Classical Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2018 - 2022
- Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies, Classical Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2022
- Research Profesor of Classical Studies, Classical Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2013
Contact Information
- 233G Allen Building, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
- Box 90103, Durham, NC 27708-0103
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gdav@duke.edu
(919) 684-3779
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http://www.duke.edu/web/classics/~gdav
- Background
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Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley 1969
- B.A., Harvard University 1960
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Duke Appointment History
- Interim Chair of Romance Studies, Romance Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2016 - 2017
- Professor in Literature, Literature, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1994 - 2013
- Professor with Tenure, Classical Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 1994 - 2013
- Dean of the Humanities, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University 2004 - 2009
- Chair, Deparment of Classical Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Duke University 1999 - 2003
- Recognition
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Awards & Honors
- Andrew W. Mellon Research Professor in the Humanities. Duke University. 2013
- Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor in the Humanities . Duke University. 1994
- Goldwin Smith Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics. Cornell University. 1991
- King/Chavez/Parks Visiting Professor. University of Michigan. 1988
- Internal Fellow. Stanford Humanities Center . 1983
- University Fellow. Stanford University. 1975
- Mellon Junior Faculty Leave Fellow. Stanford University. 1973
- Study Fellow. Committee on the Comparative Study of Africa and the Americas, Stanford University. 1971
- Arthur D. Cory Traveling Fellow. Harvard University. 1961
- Latin Orator. Harvard University. 1960
- Bowdoin Prizewinner in Latin Translation. Harvard College . 1957
- Expertise
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Subject Headings
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Global Scholarship
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Expertise
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Research
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- Publications & Artistic Works
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Selected Publications
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Books
- Davis, G. Parthenope: The interplay of ideas in Vergilian Bucolic. January 1, 2012.
- Davis, G. Virgil's eclogues. December 1, 2010.
- A Companion to Horace. : Wiley-Blackwell, March 12, 2010. Full Text
- Davis, G. Aimé Césaire. Cambridge University Press, 1997. (Monograph)
- Davis, G. Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse. University of California Press, 1991. (Monograph)
- Davis, G. Non-Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aimé Césaire. Stanford University Press, 1984.
- Davis, G. The Death of Procris: "Amor" and the Hunt in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Edizioni dell’ Ateneo, January 1983. (Monograph)
- Davis, G, and Davis, M. Antigua Black: Portrait of an Island People. Scrimshaw Press, 1971.
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Academic Articles
- Crichlow, MA, and Davis, G. "Introduction." South Atlantic Quarterly 115, no. 3 (July 1, 2016): 437-440. Full Text
- Davis, G. "Forging a Caribbean Literary Style: “Vulgar Eloquence” and the Language of Césaire'sCahier d'un retour au pays natal." South Atlantic Quarterly 115, no. 3 (July 2016): 457-467. Full Text
- Davis, G. "A, virgo infelix, quae te dementia cepit?: The Epicurean Critique of amor insanus." Vergilius 57 (2011): 35-54.
- Davis, G. "Negritude-as-performance: The interplay of efficacious and inefficacious speech acts in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal." Research in African Literatures 41, no. 1 (February 16, 2010): 142-154. Full Text
- Davis, G. "Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: the Antigua Collection." (2004).
- Davis, G. "Ait Phaselus: The Caricature of Stylistic Inelegance in Catullus 4"." "Materiali e discussioni per l'analysi dei testi classici." 48 (August 2002): 111-143.
- Davis, G. "Lyric Tales M. Lowrie: Horace’s Narrative Odes . Pp. viii + 382. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. ISBN: 0-19-815053-9." The Classical Review 49, no. 01 (April 1999): 50-50. Full Text
- Davis, G. "'Pastoral sites': aspects of bucolic transformation in Derek Walcott's Omeros." Classical World 93.1 (1999): 43-49.
- Davis, G. "L'intertextualite comme strategie dans un programme postcolonial: 'Ferrements' d'Aime Cesaire." Europe 832-3 (1998): 109-118.
- Davis, G. "'With no Homeric Shadow': The Disavowal of Epic in Derek Walcott's Omeros." South Atlantic Quarterly 96.2 (1997): 321-333.
- Davis, G. "Cupid at the Ivory Gates: Ausonius as a reader of Vergil." Colby Quarterly 30.3 (1994): 162-170.
- Davis, G. "Ingenii cumba?: literary aporia and the rhetoric of Horace's O navis referent (C.1.14)." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 132 (1989): 331-345.
- Davis, G. "Carmina/Iambi: the literary-generic dimension of Horace's Integer vitae (C.1, 22)." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica: atti di convegni 27, no. 3 (1987): 67-78.
- Davis, G. "Quis..digne scripserit?: The topos of alter Homerus in Horace C.1.6." Phoenix 41.3 (1987): 292-295.
- Davis, G. "Carmina/Iambi: the literary-generic dimension of Horace's Integer vitae (C.1, 22)." Quaderni Urbinati di cultura classica 27.3 (1987): 67-78.
- Davis, G. "Silence and Decorum: Encomiastic Convention and the Epilogue of Horace "Carm." 3.2." Classical Antiquity 2, no. 1 (April 1, 1983): 9-26. Full Text
- Davis, G. "The Disavowal of the Grand (Recusatio) in two poems by Wallace Stevens." Pacific Coast Philology 17, no. 1-2 (1982): 92-102.
- Davis, G. "The Problem of Closure in a carmen perpetuum: Aspects of Thematic Recapitulation in Ovid Metamorphoses 15." Grazer Beiträge 9 (1980): 123-132.
- Davis, G. "Ovid Metamorphoses 3.442ff. and the Prologue to Menander's Misoumenos." Phoenix 32 (1978): 339-342.
- Davis, G. "Towards a ‘Non-Vicious Circle’: The Lyric of Aimé Césaire in English." Stanford French Review 1.1 (1977): 135-146.
- Davis, G. "The persona of licymnia: A revaluation of horace, carm. 2. 12." Philologus 119, no. 1-2 (January 1, 1975): 70-83. Full Text
- Davis, G. "Ad Sidera Notus: The Rhetoric of Lament and Consolation in Fortunatus' De Gelesuintha." Agon 1.1 (1967): 118-134.
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Book Sections
- Fujimoto, JG, Izatt, JA, and Tuchin, VV. "Introduction." , xi-xii. January 1, 2017. Full Text
- Collier, JH. "Introduction." , 227-228. May 3, 2016. Full Text
- Davis, G. "Journal of a Homecoming (Accepted)." In Cahier d'un retour au pays natal by Aimé Césaire, translated by G Davis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Locus of performance and lyric argument in Horace C.3.28 (In preparation)." In Actes du colloque de Lyon "La poésie lyrique dans la cité antique, translated by G Davis, 275-284. Lyon, France: École Normale de Lyon, 2015. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "The dual function of the umbra-motif in Vergil’s Bucolics." In Vergilian Studies dedicated to the memory of Mario Geymonat, edited by HC Günther, 89-101. Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2015. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Aimé Césaire (In preparation)." In Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. 2015.
- Davis, G. "Defining a Lyric Ethos: Archilochus lyricus and Horatian melos." In A Companion to Horace, 105-127. February 8, 2010. Full Text
- Davis, G. "Archilochus lyricus and Horatian melos." In A Companion to Horace, edited by G Davis, 105-127. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2010. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Aimé Césaire." In Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by A Irele and B Jeyifo. Oxford University Press, 2010.
- Davis, G. "Derek Walcott." In Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by A Irele and B Jeyifo. 2010.
- Davis, G. "Reframing the Homeric: images of the Odyssey in the art of Derek Walcott and Romare Bearden." In Oxford Companion to Classical Receptions, edited by L Hardwick and C Stray, 401-414. Oxford University Press, 2007.
- Davis, G. "’Homecomings without Home’: representations of (post)colonial nostos (homecoming) in the lyric of Aimé Césaire and Derek Walcott’." In Homer in the Twentieth Century: between World Literature and the Western Canon, edited by E Greenwood and B Graziosi. Oxford University Press, 2007.
- Davis, G. "Wine and the symposium." In The Cambridge Companion to Horace, 207-220. January 1, 2007. Full Text
- Davis, G. "From Lyric to Elegy: the Inscription of the Elegiac Subject in Heroides 15 (Sappho to Phaon)." In Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature: Essays Presented to William S. Anderson on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, edited by WW Batsone and G Tissol, 175-191. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Consolation in the Bucolic mode: The Epicurean cadence of Vergil’s First Eclogue." In Vergil. Philodemus, and the Augustans, edited by D Armstrong, J Fish, P Johnston, and M Skinner, 63-74. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 2003.
- Davis, G. "Epilogue." In Modern Black Writers, edited by M Woodworks. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000.
- Davis, G. "Carmina/Iambi: the literary-generic dimension of Horace's Integer vitae (C.1, 22)." In Why Horace: A Collection of Interpretations, edited by WS Anderson, 51-62. Wauconda, Ill: Bolchazy- Carducci, 1999. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Carmina/Iambi: the literary-generic dimension of Horace's Integer vitae (C.1, 22)." In Why Horace: A Collection of Interpretations, edited by WS Anderson, 51-62. Wauconda, Ill: Bolchazy- Carducci, 1999. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Beyond Disciplinary Hierarchies in Higher Education." In Bruce A. Kimball: The Condition of American Liberal Education: Pragmatism and a Changing Tradition, edited by R Orrill. College Entrance Examination Board, New York, 1995.
- Davis, G. "Between Cultures: toward a redefinition of Liberal Education." In African Studies and the Undergraduate Curriculum, edited by P Alden, D Lloyd, and A Samatar, 19-34. Boulder, Colorado & London: Lynne Reicher Publishers, 1994. (Essay)
- Davis, G. "Desire and the Hunt in Ovid’s Metamorphoses." In The Burnett Lectures: A Quarter Century, edited by EN Genovese, 142-170. 1993. (Essay)
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Other Articles
- Davis, G. "Lyric worlds: Old and New under the sun." Arts and Sciences Newsletter 12, no. 1 (1991).
- Davis, G. "The mind at the end of the palm." The Stanford Magazine (1982): 46-51. (Scholarly Commentary)
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Book Reviews
- Davis, G. "Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century by Emily Greenwood (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010)." New West Indian Guide/Neue West-Indische Gids 48, no. 1 & 2 (2012): 179-181.
- Davis, G. "Horace’s Narrative Odes by Michèle Lowrie (Oxford 1997)." Classical Review ns. 49, no. 1 (1999): 50-52.
- Davis, G. "Epic of the Dispossessed: Derek Walcott’s Omeros by Robert D. Hammer (Columbia 1997)." South Central Review 15, no. 2 (1998): 59-61.
- Davis, G. "Derek Walcott’s Poetry: American Mimicry by Rei Terada (Boston 1992)." American Literature 69, no. 1 (1997): 241-241.
- Davis, G. "On Césaire, review-essay on Aimé Césaire: le nègre inconsolé by Roger Toumson and Simonne Henry-Valmore (Paris/Fort-de-France 1993); Aimé Césaire: une traversée paradoxale du siècle by Raphael Confiant (Paris 1993); Cahier d’un retour au pays natal ed. Abiola Irele." Research in African Literatures 26, no. 2 (1995): 173-184.
- Davis, G. "Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception by Charles Martindale (Cambridge 1993)." New England Classical Newsletter and Journal 20, no. 4 (1993): 86-87.
- Davis, G. "From a Sabine Jar by L. Edmunds (Chapel Hill 1992)." Classical Journal 88, no. 2 (1993): 203-206.
- Davis, G. "Metaformations by F. Ahl (Ithaca 1985)." Classical Philology 83, no. 3 (1985): 260-262.
- Davis, G. "The Art of the Aeneid by W.S. Anderson." Comparative Literature 24, no. 1 (1972): 93-94.
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Journal Issues
- Davis, G. "Ut pictura poesis: A Testament." Agenda 39, no. 1-3 (2002): 198-199. (Special Issue)
- Davis, G. "The figure of Anacreon in Horatian lyric." Hellas 7, no. 2 (1996): 63-74. (Special Issue)
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Digital Publications
- Davis, G. "A flag of one’s own? Aimé Césaire between poetry and politics." (June 26, 2013). Link to Item
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- Teaching & Mentoring
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Recent Courses
- CLST 204: Ancient and Medieval Epic 2019
- LATIN 204: Advanced Intermediate Latin 2019
- LATIN 307S: Philosophy and Literature in Antiquity 2019
- LATIN 504S: Selections from Latin Texts/Authors in the Genres of History, Oratory, and/or Philosophy 2019
- LATIN 764: Seminar in Latin Literature I 2019
- MEDREN 303: Ancient and Medieval Epic 2019
- CLST 790: Special Topics in Classical Studies 2018
- LATIN 328S: Eleg 2018
- LATIN 581S: Latin Prose Syntax and Style 2018
- LATIN 691: Directed Reading and Research 2018
- LATIN 368S: Snapshots of Rome 2017
- Scholarly, Clinical, & Service Activities
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Presentations & Appearances
- Journal of a Homecoming (reading of excerpts from new English Translation). October 31, 2013 2013
- Post-Colonial Receptions of the Odyssey in Art and Poetry: Romare Bearden and Derek Walcott.. April 25, 2013 2013
- “Defining the ethos of the speaker: Horace’s adaptations of a Pindaric rhetorical strategy.”. April 19, 2013 2013
- “Amores solliciti: the Epicurean framing of erotic experience in Vergil: Bucolics 1. April 12, 2013 2013
- Negritude as Performance: The Parade of Black Masks in Aimé Césaire's Journal of Homecoming.. March 1, 2009 2009
- Framing a Dialogue on vicissitude (Vergil Eclogues 1).. 2009 2009
- Il programma filosofico della prima egloga (Bucoliche I) di Virgilio. University of Bologna. 2009 2009
- Lectures on Vergil's Aeneid at Bard College and Purdue University. 2009 2009
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Service to the Profession
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