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Joanna Program: English Ph.D.
Began program in 2002
Area of Study: 20th Century American Literature; Race, Immigration and National Identity
E-Mail: joanna-davis@uiowa.edu
I received my B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from The University of Kansas in 2002. Throughout the course of my college career I pursued playwrighting and fiction writing, though I quickly enough determined that even though writing creatively suits me and my free spirit just fine, I actually wouldn't mind getting paid for my effort every now and then. I am, I suppose, as Midwestern as one could possibly be; born in Kansas, I spent my formative years in Wheaton, IL and Iowa City, IA, where my father was occupied earning a PhD in Religion. You could say, if pressed, that entering into the PhD program at Iowa was somewhat of a return for me. I am currently working on my dissertation under the gracious auspices of Harry Stecopoulos, which I have tentatively titled "Toward a New Americanism: Ethnoracial National Identity in Black and Immigrant Narratives from World War I to the Present." In my project, I explore the ways in which African American and immigrant subjects were explicated in tandem with, and in opposition to one another, by examining situations ranging from the effect of the Johnson-Reed Act on the rural South in William Faulkner's "Light in August" to the contestation of American boundaries and borders in Leslie Marmon Silko's "Alamanac of the Dead." When not writing, which is rare these days, I watch American film, read comic books, beat my head on the punk rock, and enjoy frequent jaunts to the tattoo parlor. I currently reside in Iowa City with my partner, Colin, and our koshka cat, Iris Papy.