Assistant Professor

Email: ddavies@central.uh.edu 
Office: Roy G. Cullen, Room 233
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Biographical Summary

Daniel Davies's research and teaching center on late-medieval literary and historical writing, poetry and poetics, the history of pedagogy and scholarship, and cultural representations of war. In particular, he studies how texts mediate social and political contexts and the material and intellectual afterlives of the Middle Ages. He uses archival research to recover overlooked medieval texts and artefacts that comprise the history of scholarship on the Middle Ages, from the manuscripts of sixteenth-century antiquarians to the editions scholars use today.

His current book project, Everyday War: Empire, Nation, and the Making of Medieval Wartime, examines how war constituted late-medieval literary history. Drawing on manuscript studies, cultural history and close readings of literary, historical, and philosophical texts, the project argues that late-medieval literary forms like the historical chronicle and Trojan War romance are shaped by the idea of perpetual war. This project draws together English, Scottish, and French writing to challenge the traditional Anglo-French framing that characterizes scholarship on the Hundred Years War, a project that Davies continues in Literatures of the Hundred Years War (Manchester University Press, 2024), a collection of essays co-edited with R.D. Perry (University of Denver).

Davies's work on medieval literary history, the poetics of siege warfare, and manuscript studies has appeared in Modern Language Quarterly, New Medieval Literatures, and Medium Ævum. His public-facing writing can be found in The Millions, Full Stop, Avidly, Public Seminar, and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Collation blog.

Originally from Manchester, England, Davies studied in Edinburgh and Berlin before a Thouron Award brought him to the US for his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
• M.A., University of Pennsylvania
• M.A. (Hons), University of Edinburgh

Selected Publications 

• “Prophecies of Alliance and Enmity: England, Scotland, and France in the Late Middle Ages” in Literatures of the Hundred Years War. Manchester University Press, 2024.
• “Reading the Past and Researching During COVID-19.” The Collation: Research and Exploration at the Folger, April 2022.
• “The Social Life of the Riverside Chaucer.” Avidly, June 2021.
• “Medieval Scottish Historians and the Contest for Britain.” Modern Language Quarterly, 82, no. 2 (2021): 149–175. Duke University Press.
• “‘Wereyed on every side’: Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and the Logic of Siege Warfare.” Boydell and Brewer Limited, New Medieval Literatures 20 (2020): 74–106.
• With A.S.G. Edwards (University of Kent). “A New Manuscript of Knyghthode and Bataile.” Medium Ævum 87, no. 1 (2018): 137–141.

Honors, Awards and Grants Received

• William Lee Pryor College Professorship in English, University of Houston
• Huntington Library Exchange Fellowship, Jesus College, University of Oxford
• New Faculty Research Grant, University of Houston
• Small Grants Program, University of Houston
• CLASS Book Completion, University of Houston
• Short-term Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library
• Research Grant, The Strathmartine Trust
• R.W. Southern Prize, Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
• Thouron Award

Classes Taught

Undergraduate:

• ENGL 2330: Poetry of War
• ENGL 3301: Introduction to Literary Studies
• ENGL 4396: War and Representation

Graduate:

• ENGL 6362: Middle English
• ENGL 7380: History of Poetry and Poetics (Postclassicisms)
• ENGL 8392: Premodern Poetics

Research Interests 

• Late-Medieval Literature and Culture
• History Writing and Historiography
• Material Texts and Manuscript Studies
• The History of Pedagogy and Scholarship
• Classical Reception
• Poetics

Current Book Projects

• Everyday War: Empire, Nation, and the Making of Medieval Wartime,
• Literatures of the Hundred Years War, co-edited with R.D. Perry. Manchester University Press, 2024.