Her research focuses on blackness and popular culture, with special attention to discourses of taste and quality. She has written numerous essays on film and media, with some of her work appearing in Film Quarterly, Television & New Media, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Her book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture, will be published by Duke University Press in August 2018. She is the author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke U Press, 2018). In Spring 2019, Davidson and Gates will co-teach a Futures Initiative graduate course, Mediating Race: Technology, Performance, Politics, and Aesthetics in Popular Culture.