Professor Ellen Messer-Davidow Retires

On April 25, Professor and former English Chair Ellen Messer-Davidow spoke from the podium in the Pillsbury Hall attic for the final time as an active faculty member, after nearly 40 years at the U. Addressing colleagues, staff, family, and friends at her retirement celebration, she described the “swirl” of influential mentors and peers she had met along her intellectual journey. But before and after her remarks, the focus was on Messer-Davidow’s own mentorship, service, giving, and scholarship, as former students, colleagues, and community members honored her impact on the department and the University.

Then English Chair Kathryn Nuernberger noted that Messer-Davidow’s books and scholarship have not only had major influence on her fields, but that they led to expanded course offerings for the college and the department, including a course on literature and the law. Said Nuernberger, “Ellen has advocated for and helped develop a curriculum in literature that prepares students to be insightful analytical thinkers with the practical skills necessary to envision and then create a more just and sustainable future for us all.”

Alum Mary Petrie (PhD 2000), a former advisee and now Inver Hills Community College professor, spoke on the deep impact of Messer-Davidow as a founding scholar in the new field of knowledge studies. But it was also “a life-changing experience,” Petrie said, “being on the receiving end of the intelligence and attention of Ellen Messer-Davidow, that unstoppable force of care. Her influence extended far beyond scholarship to profoundly shape who I am as a human in the world, a citizen, scholar, and mother.”

“It was a joy to work with Ellen, and we accomplished a lot,” said Adam Lerner, Lerner Publishing Group CEO and English Advisory Board Chair. As department chair (2010-2016), Messer-Davidow collaborated with Lerner and other industry leaders to create the Certificate in Editing and Publishing, a popular program that provides students with essential experience and knowledge for publishing careers.

As Regents Professor Emerita Madelon Sprengnether later put it, “Ellen has been consistent throughout her career at the U of M as a stellar intelligence, a warm and outgoing colleague, a rigorous feminist, and a phenomenal administrator. We have been the beneficiary of her deep loyalty and far-sighted vision.”

Interdisciplinary scholarship

Dr. Messer-Davidow was one of five interdisciplinary scholars hired during the CLA “mega-search” in 1985-1986, after receiving her PhD from the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to Academic Discourse (2002) and The Making of Reverse Discrimination: How DeFunis and Bakke Bleached Racism from Equal Protection (2021). She co-edited four books: Women in Print I, Women in Print II, Engendering Knowledge: Feminism in Academe, and Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity. Her articles on the conservative and feminist movements have been widely cited and reprinted in both the US and abroad. Among her awards are a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, CLA Scholar of the College, McKnight Research Award, Dr. Matthew Stark Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Award, and a University of Cincinnati Distinguished Alumni Award. 

“What I like most about research projects,” said Messer-Davidow in an interview after her retirement, “is figuring out how complicated situations work. In Disciplining Feminism, my question was: how did a social movement become an academic discipline? In The Making of Reverse Discrimination: how did lawyers and judges craft the Supreme Court cases that overturned race-conscious admissions, a modest remedy that was meant to level the competition among privileged white applicants and disadvantaged applicants of color?”

In retirement, the professor plans to continue her scholarship, from writing a book about the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuits against Harvard and North Carolina, to exploring problems with veteran housing in San Francisco’s Presidio. “All of my past and future work,” she noted, “requires meshing historical and sociological analysis with meaning-making analysis that shows how new discourses are constructed and circulated. Discourses, as Lacalu and Mouffe explain in ‘Post-Marxism Without Apologies,’ are rule-bound and meaningful constellations of actors, objects, actions, and processes, not just words.”

Teaching with care

While Messer-Davidow was hired with English as her home department, the interdisciplinary scholar was expected to and did teach in other units, including Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature; Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies; Political Science; the Honors Program; the Institute for Global Studies, and the MacArthur Program. “It is difficult to do justice to how much Ellen's mentorship benefited students," PhD alum and former advisee Abhay Doshi said. "By helping students rethink what 'doing English' might entail, she opened new doors—intellectually and professionally—for us. Through her meticulous feedback and unfailing encouragement, she challenged us in the best possible way."

That support extended beyond the classroom. Asked how teaching at the U had changed over four decades, Messer-Davidow described what hasn’t changed: undergraduate students needing financial help. “One student stands out in my memories,” she said. “While taking my ‘America in Crisis’ course, she was homeless and hungry, subsisting on one meal a day at the fast-food restaurant where she worked. I phoned a succession of administrators, asking if we had temporary housing and a food bank. When I learned we had neither, I made a huge fuss and started a fund to help homeless CLA students. Thankfully, the University now offers such resources.”

Noted Professor Emerita Toni McNaron: “Ellen never shied away from speaking truth to power.” 

And Messer-Davidow has continued to back up those truths with financial support. As she announced at the retirement event, she has endowed two funds for English: The Tower Anniversary Fund, which supports the production costs for the annual undergraduate literary magazine created via an English course; and the Faculty Endowment in American Literature, Culture, & Society, which supports English faculty research projects, recruitment, and/or visiting professors. (To further support these funds, contact John Meyer at [email protected].)

Strong service across the U

As a two-term Chair of the Department of English, Messer-Davidow was instrumental in the campaign to renovate Pillsbury Hall for English and in planning for the undergraduate Creative Writing Minor and Certificate in Editing and Publishing. She also served CLA as a member of the Assembly, Promotion & Tenure Committee, and member/chair of the Budget Advisory Committee, and the University as a member of the University Senate, Committee on Finance & Planning, and the Graduate School Advisory Board, among other roles. 

“My service has been very rewarding in three main ways,” said Messer-Davidow: “It has provided a laboratory for studying how organizations function, allowed me to collaborate with wonderful colleagues, and eventuated in such good outcomes as the promotion of brilliant faculty members and the foregrounding of issues with University finance that need innovative answers.”

Her colleagues in English are very appreciative of her strong advocacy for the department. “One of Ellen's battles as chair was to insist on more clear accounting from the college about departmental finances,” said Professor Andrew Elfenbein, who followed her in that role. “My job was much easier because of what she had done.”

“When I was director of graduate studies [DGS],” described Professor Katherine Scheil, “we worked closely to sort out the labyrinth of departmental funds to support graduate students and to set up successful recruiting strategies. Ellen was an amazingly supportive chair and went above and beyond the call of duty numerous times.”

“When I became DGS in 2019,” said Associate Professor and current English Chair Nathaniel Mills, “Ellen told me to master the budget and know where all the money comes from. Now graduate students here are getting more money than grad students did previously.” 

Former Director of Undergraduate Studies Daniel Philippon noted: "Ellen was dogged in her pursuit of our Certificate in Editing and Publishing. She knew what skills our students need for a career in literary editing and publishing, and she had the vision to make it a reality, through a collaborative approach between experts in academia and leaders in business."

Looking back at her service, Messer-Davidow sees a recurring theme: “In many contexts, participants worked together, across our particular identity and issue interests, for the common good,” she said. “We need to do that coalescing now more than ever.”

What’s next?

At her retirement celebration, the scholar of knowledge production ended her remarks by exhorting listeners to better describe American social systems to non-academic audiences, so that the connections between policies and the conditions of their lives are more widely understood. It’s a goal Messer-Davidow will be working on herself, she said later, perhaps by “collecting the stories of ordinary people harmed by government policy.” She recommends reading Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt’s article “How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?” in the New York Times. “It can be superimposed on news reports of many federal initiatives and state-level bills,” she said, “to make sense of how they are reorganizing, bit-by-bit, American law, government, economy, and society.”

What else is on the retirement docket? “More time for the things I enjoy,” she said. “Walking and training, visiting with family and friends, reading scholarship and schlocky thrillers, and doing resistance work.” 

Professor Timothy Brennan, who co-advised several graduate students with Messer-Davidow, was one of the first at her celebration to congratulate and honor the instrumental leader, scholar, and teacher. “You brought people together,” he said simply. “Thank you.”