Marni Davis
Associate Professor of History, Affiliate Faculty, Urban Studies Institute History- Education
Ph.D, Emory University, 2007 (History/Jewish Studies)
- Specializations
U.S. history; modern Jewish history; immigration and ethnicity in the U.S.; history of Atlanta and urban South
- Biography
Marni Davis is a historian of ethnicity and immigration in the United States. She is the author of Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (New York University Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature and the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies.
Davis has recently developed research interests in the history of cities in the U.S. South. Her 2019 essay, “Toward an ‘Immigrant Turn’ in Jewish Entrepreneurial History: A View from the New South,” was awarded the Wasserman Prize from the journal American Jewish History. She is currently writing a book about the history of immigration, race, and urban development in Atlanta, with a focus on Black-Jewish relations. She is an affiliate faculty member of Georgia State University’s Urban Studies Institute.
Davis is co-Editor-in-Chief of American Jewish History, the scholarly journal of the American Jewish Historical Society.
- Publications
“In Memoriam: Eli N. Evans (1936-2002).” Southern Jewish History 26 (2023)
“Stadiums, Race, and Water Infrastructure: Flooding on Atlanta’s Southside” (co-authored with Richard Milligan and Andy Walter). Sports Stadiums and Environmental Justice, ed. Tim Kellison (Routledge Press, 2022) https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003262633-8/stadiums-race-water-infrastructure-flooding-atlanta-southside-marni-davis-richard-milligan-andy-walter?context=ubx&refId=8b040c39-effb-4a4c-8d83-6e29a246b6d0
“Toward an ‘Immigrant Turn’ in Jewish Entrepreneurial History: A View from the New South.” American Jewish History 103.4 (October 2019) -- https://muse.jhu.edu/article/743657
"Streetscape Palimpsest: A History of Georgia Avenue" (2019) -- bit.ly/GeorgiaAveATL
“A Minority’s Minority: Southern Jewish History.” Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzH6J1OQQewETmFQTlNLLUt2TFk> (Summer 2016)
“Immigrant Atlanta: How Newcomers Have Enriched the City.” Perspectives (December 2015)<https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2015/immigrant-atlanta-how-newcomers-have-enriched-the-city>
Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition. (New York University Press, 2012) -- https://nyupress.org/9780814720288/
“Despised Merchandise: American Jewish Alcohol Entrepreneurs and Their Critics.” Rebecca Kobrin, ed., Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter With American Capitalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012) -- https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/chosen-capital/9780813553085
“‘No Whisky Amazons in the Tents of Israel’: American Jews and the Gilded-Age Temperance Movement.” American Jewish History 94.3 (September 2008) -- https://muse.jhu.edu/article/270468