David Brion Davis was een vooraanstaande Amerikaanse intellectuele en culturele historicus, gespecialiseerd in slavernij en afschaffing in de westerse wereld. Zijn werk onderzocht de ingewikkelde verbanden tussen religieuze en ideologische factoren, materiële omstandigheden en politieke belangen. Door zijn talrijke boeken en essays speelde hij een cruciale rol in het overbrengen van complexe historische wetenschap aan een breed publiek. Davis' onderzoek heeft het begrip van hoe politieke waarden evolueren en zich verbinden met historische omstandigheden aanzienlijk vooruitgeholpen.
Inhuman Bondage is the definitive study of slavery for our time, providing a global perspective on the subject with an emphasis on the United States. Davis is one of our preeminent historians and the authority on America's greatest historical problem.
The current education climate has brought the development of classroom drama as an art form to a standstill. Practitioners need to make a qualitative leap forward in both theory and practice in order to respond to the cultural demands of the times.By linking the best of the ground-breaking work of Dorothy Heathcote and Gavin Bolton with the pioneering developments in theatre form by the playwright Edward Bond, David Davis identifies a possible way forward. In part one he critiques present drama in education – Mantle of the Expert approaches, conventions drama forms and post-dramatic theatre. In part two he restates and develops the best practice of the last fifty years, centering on the key importance of ‘living through’ drama. In part three he applies the new drama/theatre form of Edward Bond to begin building a new theory of drama in education and so transform classroom practice.Imagining the Real will be essential reading for drama students at first and higher degree level, students on initial courses of teacher education, drama teachers, lecturers in higher and further education and theatre workers generally.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2014 With this volume, Davis presents the age of emancipation as a model for reform and as probably the greatest landmark of willed moral progress in human history. Bringing to a close his staggeringly ambitious, prizewinning trilogy on slavery in Western culture Davis offers original and penetrating insights into what slavery and emancipation meant to Americans. He explores how the Haitian Revolution respectively terrified and inspired white and black Americans, hovering over the antislavery debates like a bloodstained ghost. He offers a surprising analysis of the complex and misunderstood significance the project to move freed slaves back to Africa. He vividly portrays the dehumanizing impact of slavery, as well as the generally unrecognized importance of freed slaves to abolition. Most of all, Davis presents the age of emancipation as a model for reform and as probably the greatest landmark of willed moral progress in human history.