Prof. Robert Davidson, PhD

Degrees
PhD (Cornell, 2002)

Bob Davidson is Professor of Spanish and Catalan Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Jazz Age Barcelona (U of Toronto Press, 2009; shortlisted for the Canada Prize in the Humanities) and The Hotel: Occupied Space (U of Toronto Press, 2018). His current work includes a study of material culture and early 20th-century Spanish and Catalan narrative (By and About Things) and a new research project entitled The Scent of Spain: Fragrance, Odour and Culture that considers key fragrances and scents that contributed to the Spanish olfactory environment from the beginning of the modern fragrance industry in the country to the early 2000s.

He is the founder and co-editor of UTP’s Toronto Iberic book series and has published work on different aspects of the Castilian and Catalan avant-gardes, cultural theory and film. In addition to directing the NFC, Prof. Davidson currently serves as Chair of the Manuscript Review Committee of University of Toronto Press. He takes his martini with a little extra vermouth and an olive.

Selected Publications

• The Hotel: Occupied Space (U of Toronto Press, 2018)
• Jazz Age Barcelona (U of Toronto Press, 2009)
• "New Coordinates: Spatial Mappings, National Trajectories." Guest Editor (with Joan Ramon Resina) Special Double Issue of Diacritics. 33.3-4 (2003) [2006]. 203 pp.
• "Barcelona: The Siege City" in The Catalan Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Dominic Keown. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2011. 97-116.
• "Animate Objects: Being, Obsolescence and the Limits of Citizenship in Ramón Gómez de la Serna." MLN. 123 (2008): 274-93.
• "Terroir and Catalonia." Journal of Catalan Studies. 10 (2007): 58-72.
• "A Periphery with a View: Hotel Space & Catalan Modernity." Romance Quaterly. 53.3 (2006): 169-83.