ADRIENNE DAVIS, JD
Adrienne Davis holds a dual appointment as William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and Vice Provost at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds courtesy appointments in African and African-American Studies, History, and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, all in the School of Arts & Sciences. Davis is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where she served on the Executive Committee of the Yale Law Journal.
As Vice Provost, Davis focuses on faculty diversity and development, consulting and collaborating closely with the University’s schools; managing a suite of programs from the Office of the Provost; and chairing key searches for the next generation of University leaders. From 2015 until 2017 she chaired the University’s Commission on Diversity and Inclusion, which was charged with designing a University-wide plan for diversity. She also works closely with other stakeholders at the University on a range of institutional policies, initiatives, and programs, including ones that support students and staff.
As a teacher and scholar Davis focuses on “the law of daily life,” or how law regulates and affects people’s daily interactions, decisions, and identities. She teaches Trusts & Estates, Contracts, and a variety of legal theory seminars, including ones on Slavery & the Law, Feminist Legal Theory, and Law & Literature. At the University of North Carolina she received the law school’s Frederick B. McCall Award for Teaching Excellence. She has written extensively on the gendered and private law dimensions of American slavery, the legal regulation of intimacy, and how culture and law converge to distribute justice. She has published articles in the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the California Law Review, as well as numerous other articles and book chapters. She is the co-editor of the book, Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America (NYU Press). Davis founded and is co-director of the Law, Identity & Culture Initiative. She also directed the Black Sexual Economies Project at the law school’s Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital from 2009-2013. She is the past recipient of a Bellagio Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Davis is deeply involved in several St. Louis civic institutions. She is Secretary to the St. Louis Art Museum’s Board of Commissioners and also serves on the Board of Trustees of Opera Theatre St. Louis, the St. Louis Fashion Fund, Our Little Haven, december literary magazine, and the St. Louis Visionary Awards. She is a member of the Links, Inc., St. Louis Chapter, and for three years chaired their Arts Facet.