 After serving on the Cornell University faculty for 14 years, Davis taught at Yale from 1970 to 2001.He held one-year appointments as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford University (1969-1970), at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and as the first French-American Foundation Chair in American Civilization at the "École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales" in Paris.Born in Denver in 1927, the son of Clyde Brion Davis, a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter, and Martha Elizabeth (Wirt) Davis, an artist and writer,  Davis lived a peripatetic childhood in California, Colorado, New York, Colorado, and Washington State.