Davis's 2009 book, Games of Property: Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner's Go Down Moses, received honorable mention for the William Sanders Scarborough Prize Winners given by from the Modern Language Association.
[5] Her 2014 book, Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, Literature focuses on writings by black southern writers from Mississippi and Louisiana.
[6] In 1994, Davis received the Anna Julia Cooper Award for Feminist Scholarship from Spelman College.
In 1995, the College Language Association presented Davis with an award for creative scholarship for her book on Nella Larsen.
In 2017, she received the Callaloo's Lifetime Achievement Award for American Literary and Cultural Studies.