Diane Davis

Diane Davis (born 5 or 15 July 1963) is a post-structuralist rhetorician and professor of Rhetoric and Writing, English, and Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Following her graduation from there, Diane Davis enrolled into the University of Texas at Arlington and obtained her doctorate in humanities with a concentration in rhetorical theory in 1995.

From 1995 to 1997, Davis taught in the English Department at Old Dominion University, was a teacher at the Rhetoric Department of the University of Iowa from 1997 to 2001, and since 2001 works at the University of Texas at Austin as a Professor of Rhetoric and Writing.

Her work is situated at the intersections of rhetorical theory, continental philosophy, and digital culture.

She also did her habilitation in media and communication at the European Graduate School in 2003.

She was the Director of the Digital Writing and Research Lab at UT from 2009 to 2017, and is now the chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing.

She holds the Kenneth Burke Chair of Rhetoric and Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where she teaches intensive summer seminars on Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.

Davis was born in Wichita Falls, Texas and grew up in Clear Lake City, near Houston.

She attended a less known, liberal arts college in Texas where she double majored in English and physical education/kinesiology.

On May 11, 2018, Diane Davis with a group of scholars in signed a letter to New York University following the sexual harassment suit filed by former NYU graduate student Nimrod Reitman against his advisor Avital Ronell.

The signatories acknowledged not having had access to the confidential findings of the investigation that followed Reitman's Title IX complaint against Ronell.

Nonetheless, they falsely accused Reitman of waging a "malicious campaign" against Ronell.

The signatories also wrote that Reitman's "malicious intention has animated and sustained this legal nightmare" for a highly regarded scholar.

"If she were to be terminated or relieved of her duties, the injustice would be widely recognized and opposed."

Davis is quoted from an email to The New York Times as saying "I am of course very supportive of what Title IX and the #MeToo movement are trying to do, of their efforts to confront and to prevent abuses, for which they also seek some sort of justice. But it's for that very reason that it's so disappointing when this incredible energy for justice is twisted and turned against itself, which is what many of us believe is happening in this case."

Davis clarified her defense of Ronell after Avital Ronell was found by NYU to have sexually harassed former male graduate student Nimrod Reitman.