Dear Faculty and Staff:
We are writing to let you know that visitation for Jim Davis will be held this Sunday, March 12, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the McPeek-Hoekstra Funeral Home, 133 South Prospect Street in Granville. Plans for a Celebration of Life Service will be announced at a later time.
Jim’s obituary is available at this link: http://www.mcpeekfuneralhome.com/notices/James-Davis
Adam Weinberg
Kim Coplin
To the members of the Denison community:
We are saddened to inform you of the death of James P. Davis, Associate Professor of English, at 1:15 p.m. today (March 8, 2017) following three years of illness. He was 63.
Jim received his B.A. from the University of Missouri, his M.A. from the University of Kansas, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, all in English literature and the latter with a specialization in British Romanticism. He came to Denison in 1985 as an Instructor, and in the subsequent thirty years was celebrated as a popular and effective teacher of first-year writing, advanced nonfiction writing, and British and American poetry and prose from a variety of periods. He served on the advisory board of the off-campus program Advanced Studies in England, for which he also taught. His scholarly publications included articles on British Romantic writers and special topics in popular culture, as well as a book-length study of William Wordsworth and the insightful Rowman and Littlefield Guide to Writing with Sources, currently in its fourth edition.
As a member of his department and the Denison community he was especially active, influential, and generous—from pioneering efforts such as the South African Student Orientation Program in the late 1980s, to virtually every campus governance committee in the 1990s and 2000s. He served as Chair of the English Department from 1999-2002 and as Chair of the Faculty from 2009-10. He was named the Lorena Woodrow Burke Chair of English in 2015 in recognition of his many gifts, and he will be sorely missed by his colleagues for his leadership, elegance, wit, and friendship. And even for his famously bad puns.
Memorial details will be announced at a later date.
Adam Weinberg
Kim Coplin