Dána-Ain Davis

Dána-Ain Davis is a professor of urban studies at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY) and the Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society.

Biography

Dána-Ain Davis was born in New York in 1958. She attended the University of Maryland, College Park to study film and communication, and graduated with her BA in 1980. Out of college, Davis worked at The Village Voice, a newspaper company based in New York that also wrote stories of culture and art. Davis also worked at WNYC-TV, a television station during her lifetime. She then ventured into the nonprofit sector working in the organizations: YWCA of the City of New York, Bronx AIDS Services, and The Village Centers for Care.

Davis returned to school for a Master of Public Health at Hunter College in the School of Health Sciences studying Community Health Education and graduating in 1994. Davis graduated with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2001.

Davis was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at State University of New York at Purchase and an Associate Professor and Associate Chair at Queens College. She was also the Associate Chair of the Graduate Program in Urban Affairs at Queens College from 2011-2017. Davis is currently the Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center of City University of New York.

Davis is the co-editor of Feminist Anthropology, the first journal from the Association of Feminist Anthropology (AFA). Davis is on the editorial board for Cultural Anthropology and Women's Studies Quarterly. In 2018, Davis was appointed as a Taskforce Member in Governor Cuomo's Maternal/Mortality Task Force. Dr. Davis has also served as the president of the Association of Black Anthropologists and is the co-editor of Transforming Anthropology, the journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists, with Aimee Cox.

Major Publications

Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth. New York: New York University Press, 2019. ISBN 9781479812271.

• In her timely ethnography Reproductive Injustice, Davis details how racism negatively impacts the reproductive outcomes of Black women in the United States. Davis uses the 'afterlife of slavery' framework to evaluate how preterm birth and reproductive care in the present day resemble narratives of Black women in the antebellum period. The politics, technologies, and social movements that surround premature birth are also utilized to detail accounts of medical racism and diagnostic lapses in the context of reproductive and newborn care. The insightful ethnography Reproductive Injustice has been recognized for illuminating inequalities in the medical care impacting the health of Black women, people who are pregnant in the U.S., and premature babies. Reproductive Injustice has received awards such as the Basker prize in medical anthropology, 2020 Honorable Mention for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, a finalist for the Association of American Publishers 2020 PROSE Award, and was listed in New York Magazine as one of seven books on anti-racism.

2023. Feminist Ethnography: Thinking through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities. Davis, Dána-Ain, and Christa Craven. Second edition. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 2023. ISBN 978-1-5381-2980-7

Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges & Possibilities. Dána-Ain Davis and Crista Craven. Lanham, Maryland; Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7591-2244-4.

Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America. Edited Collection, Christa Craven & Dána-Ain Davis, eds. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7391-7636-8.

• Davis has co-authored three texts on the theory and practice of feminist ethnography, such as Feminist Ethnography and Feminist Activist Ethnography. The books cover topics such as what it means to be a feminist anthropologist and ethnographer, how to do feminist ethnography, debates in the field, and the forms that feminist activism can take. Davis' work characterizing feminist ethnography has shaped the scholarship and possibilities within anthropology and social science.

Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform: Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-7914-6843-2.

• In Davis' first book, Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform, she describes the experiences of Black women on welfare in the state of New York at a battered women's shelter. Through ethnographic accounts of women's experiences, Davis reveals the shortcomings of the welfare system and humanizes those who utilize these programs. Davis focuses on how racism impacts the experiences of those on welfare and contributes to the circulation of negative stereotypes about women who receive this support.

Black Genders and Sexualities. Edited collection, Shaka McGlotten and Dána-Ain Davis, eds. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2012. ISBN 978-1-137-07795-0.

Influence

Davis’ work has been influential in the field of Black feminist ethnography, medical anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), and women, gender, and sexuality studies. She has brought a critical eye to the role that racism plays in the inequities of care for pregnant people, reproductive care, and pre-term babies.

Davis is also working to de-colonize/de-canonize medical anthropology by understanding citational practices as a form of reproductive technology. Her recent publication, co-authored with Sameena Mulla, argues for an expansion of the citational practices in medical anthropology beyond Western-centric and white scholarship, to enrich and diversify the discipline. They argue that using theories and foundational texts from European and North American scholars do not give medical anthropologists the tools to understand local contexts and the meanings of wellbeing in different contexts. Instead, to push back against professional anthropology and its exclusionary practices, the authors argue that diverse voices and innovative thinking should be included in citations to expand anthropology’s creative possibility. This not only includes diversity in the voices cited in academic texts, but also expanding citational practices to forms of knowledge making beyond the written text.

Public Engagement and Advocacy

Davis describes one of the main foci of her academic pursuits as activist anthropology, which is evident in her public-facing scholarship and community service endeavors. Davis designs her research projects with community input and they are often based on her experience working with reproductive justice advocacy movements.

A recent symposium at Barnard College and a special issue in The Scholar and Feminist Online features Davis' book Reproductive Injustice for a discussion on medical racism, realities of birth for Black people in the U.S., and creating a collaborative vision for the future. The special issue and salon showcase how Davis' work in conversation with others fighting for reproductive justice, such as one of the founding members of the Reproductive Justice movement Toni Bond-Leonard, artist and director Kelly Marshall, and esteemed sociologist and lawyer Dorothy Roberts.

Throughout her career, Dána-Ain Davis has worked as a doula and with organizations such as:

• NARAL-NY
• Interfaith Voices for Reproductive Justice
• The Reproductive Rights Education Project at Hunter College
• The National Network of Abortion Funds
• Sista to Sista Advisory Board
• Board Chair of New York Foundation
• Women of Color Policy Network Roundtable of Institutions of People of Color and Women of Color Policy Network
• New York State National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, Board Co-Chair
• Harm Reduction Educators Board Member