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ScholarWorks > Arts & Sciences > English > COMPDR > Vol. 58 (2024) > Iss. 3

 

In Memoriam: Clifford O. Davidson: 1932–2024

Lofton Durham

Abstract

When Clifford Davidson retired from Western Michigan University in 2003, the Medieval Institute, where he held a joint appointment with English for nearly 40 years, printed a short volume of essays in his honor. If you read the introduction penned by Barbara Palmer, you learn about a person who was a prolific scholar, a persuasive editor, an intellectual trailblazer, and an energetic cheerleader. In retirement, Davidson remained close to the many institutions at the University that he played a leadership role in founding and nurturing, including this journal, still housed within the Department of English. Moreover, he left a global network of scholars who form, in part, his generous legacy of editorial and field leadership.

Born October 29, 1932, Clifford Davidson attended one-room rural elementary schools near Faribault, Minnesota and later Brainerd (Minnesota) High School. He received his bachelor’s degree from St. Cloud State University and pursued graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, with interruptions during which he taught at the secondary level and served in the U.S. Army, the latter as a post newspaper editor at the Granite City (Illinois) Engineer Depot. He moved to Michigan in 1959 to complete his graduate studies at Wayne State University, from which he received his Ph.D. and where he also was employed as an Instructor in English.

Davidson received an appointment as Assistant Professor of English at Western Michigan University in 1965, and two years later helped to establish this journal, which he served as a co-editor for 32 years. As an active participant in the development of the Medieval Institute at the University, he saw it grow into an internationally recognized unit which would in time sponsor the largest annual medieval conference in the world. In 1976 he founded the Early Drama, Art, and Music research project and book series within the Medieval Institute and served as its director for a quarter of a century. He also assisted his wife, the musicologist and gifted soprano Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, as dramatic director of numerous medieval music-dramas presented by the Society for Old Music (now Early Music Michigan), of which she was the founder and director.

His research, conducted in American and European libraries and archives, led to voluminous publications and an international reputation with his articles and reviews published on four continents. He was the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than forty books and monographs, among them such titles as From Creation to Doom: The York Cycle of Mystery Plays (AMS, 1984), History, Religion, and Violence (Ashgate, 2002), Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580 (Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), Deliver Us from Evil (AMS, 2004) and a complete edition of The York Corpus Christi Plays (Medieval Institute Publications, 2011), the latter prepared as a contribution to a project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1985, Western Michigan University bestowed its highest academic honor on Davidson, naming him a Distinguished Faculty Scholar.

While Davidson was a prolific writer and thinker, he was also a tireless recruiter. Whether suggesting article topics or book chapters or even ideas for monographs, he was continually working to invite more scholars into the conversation. For its first 33 volumes, Comparative Drama was the primary recipient of this energy. For the two decades following retirement, his enthusiasm for recruiting new voices did not wane. For example, he was active as a board member and networker for Early Music Michigan, wrote book reviews for this journal, and solicited scholarly contributions to the “Medieval Studies” section of Oxford Bibliographies Online. He remained an avid reader of Comparative Drama to the very end, often discussing articles with colleagues new and old. In addition to his scholarly leadership, he championed live performances of medieval material, not only through Early Music Michigan, but also the Mostly Medieval Theatre Festival, established in 2017 in coordination with the Congress on Medieval Studies, as well as WMU’s Irving S. Gilmore School of Music, where he and his wife endowed a scholarship for the study of early music.

When he died on June 4, 2024, it had not been a month since he attended his 57th congress—a record of continual involvement that is rare if not unique. Despite some physical infirmity, and some impatience with a memory not as swift and precise as it once was, Davidson nonetheless persevered in being a part of the academic community that he loved so much and that nurtured him his whole life. With his mentorship of dozens of scholars over the decades—many published in this journal’s pages—Clifford Davidson is set apart as a giant in the field of early drama studies: a scholar as generous as he was prolific. It is to our great fortune that he was with us for so long.

Comparative Drama is carried by JSTOR and Project MUSE.

Link to Project Muse


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