Professor Rebecca Miller Davis is a social and political historian of modern American history with research and teaching interests in race, media, social justice, and the New South. She teaches the department’s American history surveys; courses in the UMKC Essentials General Education curriculum; the department’s historiography and research methods course; upper-level and graduate history courses in Black history, the 1960s, and World War II film and propaganda; as well as the graduate colloquium readings course. She is the history department’s Major Academic Path (MAP)/Faculty Mentor and she works with the High School College Partnership (HSCP) program to facilitate dual-credit courses taught in partnering high schools. As a certified teacher herself, Dr. Davis is the department contact for School of Education students interested in a history major/minor as they pursue a career as a social studies teacher.
Dr. Davis earned her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2011 and came to UMKC in 2012. She was awarded the UMKC Online Course of the Year in 2015, the College of Arts and Sciences' Outstanding Teaching Award for NTT Faculty in 2016, Faculty Ally of the Year by the campus organization Men of Color in 2016, and the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020. She is the co-editor of a digital project on Kansas City activism and authored various articles and essays on race, education, and politics. Dr. Davis is working on her first book with the University of Georgia Press dealing with Mississippi press coverage of the Black freedom struggle.
Undergraduate:
Graduate:
B.A. History (Minor in Secondary Education), James Madison University (2001)
M.A. History, James Madison University (2003)
Ph.D. History, University of South Carolina (2011)