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Cathy Davidson

Professor at Graduate Center at City University of New York

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ5053409
Source-derived summary

Cathy N. Davidson (born 1949) is an American scholar and university professor. She is a Distinguished Professor of English, Digital Humanities, and Data Analysis and Visualization at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where she founded the Futures Initiative.

She has authored or edited 18 books. Her work focuses on technology, collaboration, cognition, learning, and the digital age.

Early life and education

Davidson was born in Chicago, received a B.A. from Elmhurst College, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Binghamton University, and did postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago. She has received honorary doctorates from Elmhurst College and Northwestern University.

Career

Davidson was a professor of English at Michigan State University. She served as vice provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University from 1998 to 2006, with administrative responsibility for over 60 research programs in Duke's nine academic and professional schools. She was responsible for designing technologies for research, teaching, and learning, and in 1999 helped create ISIS, the program in Information Science + Information Studies at Duke.

In 2002, Davidson co-founded with David Theo Goldberg the virtual organization Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory HASTAC, an international organization dedicated to rethinking the future of learning for the information age.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cathy Davidson” is professor at Graduate Center at City University of New York. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cathy, Davidson and Professor, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949, 1998, 2006, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1949-06-21. For this dossier, Cathy, Davidson and Professor is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “professor at Graduate Center at City University of New York” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5053409. VIAF identifies the subject as 94015475. The Library of Congress control number is n79135597. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 1998, 2006 and 1999.

Critical limits

A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cathy Davidson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cathy Davidson primary sources, Cathy Davidson archive and Cathy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cathy Davidson”?
  2. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cathy Davidson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.