Jenny L. Davis

Jenny L. Davis is an American linguist and anthropologist. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American Indian Studies, and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where she is the director of the Native American and Indigenous Languages (NAIL) Lab. Her research is on contemporary Indigenous languages and identity, focusing on Indigenous language revitalization and Indigenous gender and sexuality, especially within the Two-Spirit movement.

She is an author of non-fiction, fiction, and poetryfrom Mannford, Oklahoma and a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Her books have been awarded the Ruth Benedict Prize by the Association for Queer Anthropology for her co-edited volume, Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. and the Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Monograph in American Indian Studies from the Native American Literature Symposium and the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures for her book, Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance.

Davis studied Spanish and English at Oklahoma State University and holds an MA and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Colorado Boulder. She has held the Henry Roe Cloud Fellowship at Yale University and the Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Kentucky.

Davis's activism is split between advocating for Indigenous and endangered language revitalization and the Two-Spirit movement. She served as a co-director of both the Two-Spirit Society of Denver (2007–2010) and the Tulsa Two-Spirit Society (2010–2011) and co-organizer of the 2009 International Two Spirit Gathering in Estes Park, Colorado. In 2014, she served as one of three head dancers at the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirit Society (BAAITS) Powwow.

Davis teaches workshops and courses around language documentation and revitalization and has been involved with the InField/CoLANG Institute as a co-instructor of the Language Activism course at the 2014, 2016, and 2018 summer institutes.

Books

• Davis, Jenny L. (2018-04-17). Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance. University of Arizona Press. ISBN 9780816537686. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
• Zimman, Lal (August 2014). Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Studies in Language and Gender. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199937318. Retrieved 9 October 2018.

Work in anthologies

• Resist Much / Obey Little Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. Dispatch Editions. 2017. ISBN 978-1-944682-32-3. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• Home. The Raven Chronicles. 2017. ISBN 9780997946826.
• Our Poetica: A Testament to the Shared Uniqueness of the Poetic Experience. Cathexis Northwest Press. 2019. ISBN 1733027904. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
• Yellow Medicine Review. Southwest Minnesota State University. 2019.

Online poetry and fiction

• "the seed runner". Transmotion. 4 (2): 136–141. 2018. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• "Indigenous Kinship Systems". Broadsided Press. February 7, 2017.
• "Academic Side Show Woman". As US (6). 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• "Before We Were Ashes". As Us (6). 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• "Real Indian ABC". As US (6). 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• "THE (AMERICAN) INDIAN (STUDIES) REMOVAL ACT OF 2014". As Us (6). 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• "The Girl Who Loves Turtles". River, Blood and Corn. 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• "A Seat at the Trickster's Table". Santa Ana River Review (Fall/Winter). 2019. Retrieved 11 February 2019.

• 2019 Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Monograph in American Indian Studies for Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance from the Native American Literature Symposium and the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures.
• 2017–2018 Faculty Fellow, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign.
• 2014 Ruth Benedict Prize for Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality from the Association for Queer Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association.

• Hannabach, Cathy. "Jenny L. Davis on Indigenous Language Revitalization". Imagine Otherwise. Ideas on Fire. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• Todd, Zoe. "'academia has its own set of rules': Jenny Davis on language revitalization and Indigenous gender and sexuality in North America". Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology.