Savitt Is First Holder of Davidson Chair

Todd L. Savitt is spending this semester on campus as the first holder of the L. Stacy Davidson Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts. Savitt, a scholar in the history of African American medicine, teaches medical ethics and history at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

His duties as holder of the Davidson Chair include teaching a freshman honors seminar in medicine and society from a historical perspective and directing "Medical Readers Theatre," a seminar for students planning careers in health care. He is also delivering public lectures and meeting with a variety of groups on and off campus.

With philosophy and classics professors as his office neighbors in the new McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College, Savitt finds himself in a familiar setting. "All of my teaching has been in interdisciplinary settings with colleagues in philosophy, history, law, literature, and medicine, so I feel right at home here."

Filling the Davidson Chair is not Savitts first experience with the University. He made frequent visits to the campus while working with the Center on two Barnard-Millington Symposia, "Science in the Old South" in 1982 and "Medicine in the Old South" in 1983. He also spent a summer in Oxford while researching the history of black medical schools.

Savitt earned an undergraduate degree in history and studied medicine for three years. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of Virginia. At East Carolina, he is a professor in the department of Medical Humanities at the Medical School and an adjunct professor in the Department of History. Previously, he was on the faculty of the University of Florida Medical School.

L. Stacy Davidson, a physician in Cleveland, Mississippi, contributed $1 million to the University for "opening doors" in his life. The endowment in his name funds visiting lecturers within the College of Liberal Arts.

Jennifer Bryon Owen