BIOGRAPHY

Melody Davis was born in the Pennsylvania Dutch culture of the Susquehanna River valley.  Roaming about outdoors taught her to look closely at form, light, and seasonal patterns. During her studies in English at Barnard College, she lived less than a mile from the Harlem residence of her late, great grandmother and grandmother, though she did not know it then. After a period  working as a photographer, writer, and teacher of poetry between Perry County, Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn, New York, she earned an M.A. in art history at Stony Brook University, followed by a Ph.D. at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A mysterious pull between New York and the countryside of central Pennsylvania has been active in her life, informing much of her art history and poetry, which she sees as distinct literatures that strive to make the ineffable speak. She has the good fortune to be a professor of Art History at Russell Sage College and to live with two cats and 50 souls in the form of trees.