Articles

A Conversation with Steven L. Davis

On January 24, 2024, Humanities Texas will host a conversation with Steven L. Davis titled "From Sportswriters to Literary Outlaws: The Texas Mad Dogs." Davis, literary curator at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, is the author of Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond. Moderated by Aram Goudsouzian, professor of history at the University of Memphis, the conversation will explore how Texas sportswriters in the 1960s changed the field of sports journalism, reflecting broader societal and cultural movements of the time. A moderated Q&A session with the audience will follow.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024
7:00–8:15 p.m. CT

This live, virtual event is free and open to the public. Please register online to attend. You will receive a Zoom link via email prior to the virtual event.

Steven L. Davis

Author and editor of nine books, Steven L. Davis has won the PEN Center Award for Research Nonfiction. His first book, Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond, published by TCU Press in 2004, chronicles the rise of the "Mad Dog" writers of the 1960s, several of whom began as rebellious sportswriters. Davis is the longtime literary curator at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, which holds the archives of many leading writers from Texas and the Southwest. He is a past president of the Texas Institute of Letters, a literary honor society founded in 1936 with an elected membership consisting of the state's most respected writers. He is one of five living fellows of the Institute.

Aram Goudsouzian

Aram Goudsouzian is the Bizot Family Professor of History at the University of Memphis, where he teaches courses on the civil rights movement, the modern United States, and the history of American sports, as well as survey courses on African American history and the United States since 1877. He has served as department chair and as director of the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities. Along with Jaime Schultz, he is the editor of the Sport and Society series published by the University of Illinois Press.