He holds the Rothman Family Endowed Chair in the Humanities and teaches environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida.

Davis received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea.

Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez Since 1930 won the Charles S. Sydnor Prize for the best book in southern history published in 2001.

[1] An Everglades Providence (2009), received the Florida Book Award gold medal in the nonfiction category.

His other works include The Wide Brim: Early Poems and Ponderings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas (2002); Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida (2003), edited by Kari Frederickson and Davis; and The Civil Rights Movement (2000).