English Department

Robert Davidson
Graduate Advisor
Creative Writing
Phone: 898-6457
Office: Taylor 122
rgdavidson@csuchico.edu

Rob Davidson is currently Associate Professor of English at California State University, Chico. He teaches courses in creative writing and literature, and serves as Adviser for the Undergraduate Honors in English program. He received his MFA in creative writing in 1997 from Purdue University. He received his PhD in American literature in 2002, also from Purdue.

Rob’s first book, Field Observations: Stories (Missouri, 2001), won the 2002 Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Novelist Steve Yarbrough, author of The End of California, has written that “Davidson is a wonderful writer, a real find. There are a lot of writers out there who can put a story together and make the surfaces of their work gleam. What is special about Davidson’s stories is something else altogether. He has the ability to make you care deeply about his characters. They become, for all their occasional quirkiness, as real as the folks next door.” Rob’s second book, The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (Missouri, 2005), has been praised by noted Howells scholar John W. Crowley: “Consistently intelligent, thoroughly researched, gracefully written.... This is an excellent study, probably the definitive study of the criticism of James and Howells.”

Rob continues to work as both a creative writer and a scholar. As a creative writer, Rob’s honors include an AWP Intro Journals Project Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and ranking as a finalist for the 2006 Arts & Letters Fiction Prize (judged by Chitra Divakaruni). His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Bryant Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Zyzzyva and elsewhere. In 2004, the Blue Room Theatre in Chico produced Rob’s one-act play, “A Day at the Brinewort,” as part of the Fresh Ink Festival of New Plays.

Rob’s scholarly interests include late 19th-century American literature, particularly the work of Henry James and William Dean Howells. Currently, Rob serves as Vice President of the William Dean Howells Society. He will assume the Presidency of the organization in 2009. Secondary areas of interest include modern and contemporary American literature, and postcolonial studies. His scholarly essays and book reviews have been published in American Literary Realism, Modern Fiction Studies, The South Atlantic Review, Twentieth Century Literature, and elsewhere.

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A different language is a different vision of life."

—Federico Fellini