I am a literary activist with a specialization in African American History. My scholarly work focuses on the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. I seek to illumine how these distinct characteristics, these legacies of struggle, which binds people of color in the United States, can be evidenced in African American Social and Political Thought, as well as in African American literature and film. My students love being able to learn about specific movements in African American history, as well as being allowed to deconstruct gender dynamics among various groups of people. More importantly, they appreciate the opportunity to discover more about people of color who continually work to refute and combat negative stereotypes.
I have been teaching African American history and literature for over 15 years. My scholarship (while saturated in African American history) is influenced by feminist and womanist theory, including psychology. My students, having grown and flourished under my wings, have published with local newspapers and magazines. They have participated in Alternative Spring Break Programs, local community activist programs, assisted with voter registration campaigns, raised funding for and helped to re-build New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They have proudly gone on to pursue Graduate work in a diverse array of fields. I encourage all of my students to recognize our human potential and to understand that what unites us is our humanity; our quest for social justice and change. In turn, my students are inspired to be the change that they want to see in the world, to continue to effect change, and to share the wisdom they have learned with their colleagues, peers, and family.
I am president and CEO of J.D. Publishing Group, a media arts project I founded in 2004 that produces films, journal articles, and books for women of color. Originally from Oakland, California, I was raised in the Bay Area, living in such places like Berkeley and Fremont. As a Gifted and Talented student, having taken courses at UC Berkeley with playwright P.J. Gibson, I participated in Honors Programs all throughout elementary, junior, and high school, and remained on the Dean's List at San Francisco State University, where I graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Theater Arts. There, at San Francisco State, I received numerous scholarship awards while touring off campus with several theater companies. Some of the awards I received while at S.F. State include, but are certainly not limited to: The Robert A. Corrigan President's Alumni Scholarship and the Franum Outstanding Black Female Undergraduate Scholarship. Gratefully, while walking to a Theater Arts Program at San Francisco State, I discovered the historic Black Studies program at the University and sought to take several courses from their curriculum. The Black Studies program at San Francisco State University fueled my desire to learn more about my history and culture, and developed a thirst within me for self-knowledge. I see this same thirst for knowledge in my own students who, after taking courses with me, reveal to me that they never knew about the Harlem Renaissance movement, the Black Arts Movement, or other periods in African American history. Like my students, I wanted to know more about myself and my contributions so I decided to travel east for my Graduate studies. I knew that if I wanted to continue writing and publishing, then first I would have to learn more about other African American artists, activists, writers, and poets who had gone before me, providing me with the rich bluepring that I now build upon.
Howard University in Washington, DC was the perfect choice for Graduate School for graduate school for me because it allowed me the opportunity to discover more about African American and Caribbean history. It was at Howard, for example, that I received my Masters Degree with Distinction in African American and Caribbean Literature. While at Howard, I met numerous African American poets and writers --many of which I am still friends with today. Those writers include, but are certainly not limited to: Kalamu ya Salaam, Sonia Sanchez, Rita Dove, Askia Toure', Cornel West, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, and Nikki Giovanni. I participated in numerous conferences held at the university featuring African American poets and writers. I was equally impressed by the amount of scholarship that was being produced by both faculty and students. This outpouring of knowledge, coupled with my exceptional mentoring from Dr. Camille Cole Howard at San Francisco State University and numerous other faculty members at Howard University, inspired me to pursue my Ph.D.
My Masters Thesis was entitled, "The Mother Daughter Bond: A Psychoanalytic Feminist Critique of the Bildungsroman in Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John." When I teach Contemporary Black Autobiography, my love for the bildungsroman genre shines. It is through this genre, much like the activist autobiographies produced during the late 1960s and early 1970s by women like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, that we, as readers, are able to see themes of resistance and triumph present in the literature of our colleagues. While completing my Masters at Howard University, I published two books: 101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves: A Gift for Women of All Ages (2002) and Signifyin' Me: New and Selected Poems (2006). My first book received stunning reviews from Heart & Soul magazine, Upscale magazine, and Black Issues Book Review, and is still requested to this very day by social workers and psychotherapists around the world who wish to use it in their practice.
In 2005, I received my Ph.D. with distinction in African American and Caribbean Literature from Howard University. My Doctoral Dissertation focused on the way in which African American women writers, specifically, during the 1960s Black Arts and Black Power Movements, were able to revise the militant Black aesthetic of the time period, inserting their own feminine discourse into one that was dominated by their male peers. My dissertation, which is titled, "Evolution of a Poet: Re-Membering the Black Female Aesthetic and the Transformed Consciousness of Sonia Sanchez, Prophetic Voice of the Black Arts Movement" seeks to illustrate how Sanchez engaged in acts of revision, remembrance, and recursion, as she revised popular notions about Black womanhood, motherhood, and sexuality with her poetry and plays. Gratefully, I was able to study with Sanchez at Howard when she taught at "Poetry as Spiritual Practice" class one semester. Sanchez and I bonded so well that she invited me to be her Research Assistant. Over the years, she'd grant me a scholarship in her name and honor, on behalf of the Elizabeth H. Howard Trust Fund, and I'd travel with her around the country, assisting her with her poetry workshops in such places like Naropa University in Boulder, CO and Kentucky University, where we performed our poetry together after the late Shirley Horn.
I chronicled Sanchez's performances, as well as the literary activist work of other poets and writers, in the Black press for several years. My cover stories were featured in the New York Amsterdam News, The Washington Informer, The San Francisco Bayview, The Tennessee Tribune, and numerous other Black newspapers and magazines.
It was at Howard that I met wife of Bill Cosby, Camille Cosby, and her dear friend, Renee Poussaint. The two women (including poet E. Ethelbert Miller) offered me a fellowship in their new start-up organization called The National Visionary Heritage Fellowship Program. Studying with Camille Cosby, I was able to meet other renowned African American artists and elders, including, but certainly not limited to: David Driskell, the late Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and so many more. Through poet E. Ethelbert Miller, I was offered a generous Poetry Scholarship at The Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
I have taught for several years in the Afro Studies Department at Howard University. While at Howard, I served as the University's first trade book buyer and assisted Moorland-Spingarn with increasing their African American History and Caribbean History collections; specifically, for masters and doctoral students. At Howard, I also worked for the University Press, assisting D. Kamili Anderson, then director of the organization, with all marketing and editorial related duties. Under Anderson's tutelage, I helped to resurrect over 100 formerly out-of-print titles, which were to be prepared for an impressive On Demand Publishing Project sponsored by John Hopkins University. I created all of the ads, press releases, and posters for the University Press. Additionally, I was solely responsible for designing the University Press website, and worked very closely with our Marketing Director, scheduling author appearances and assisting with University wide conferences. Working at these colleges with other Black poets and writers increased my presence in the literary world, as I sought to continue publishing, writing, and touring on my own.
The other colleges that I have taught at include Santa Clara University, Trinity University, Bowie State University, and Holy Names University. At Santa Clara University, I served a joint-appointment in Ethnic Studies and the University's Drahmann Advising and Learning Center. During my time at Santa Clara University, I worked one-on-one with hundreds of students, including working closely with those on probation, and implemented two new courses for the Diversity Core Curriculum:
- "Women, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Harlem Renaissance Fiction"
- "African American Independent Filmmakers"
Due to the interdisciplinary nature of my courses, the first class above was cross-listed in three different departments: English, Ethnic Studies, and Women's & Gender Studies. The second class was taught in Ethnic Studies and is currently in the process of being added to the Cinema Studies pathway as well as to the Cinema studies core in the Communications Department.
At Santa Clara University, I have provided workshops for 3200 incoming Freshman and over 400 Transfer Students. I have provided these students with instruction about University Core Curriculum guidelines as well as major and minor requirements in their respective fields. I have supported and encouraged them as they sought to matriculate through the University, successfully going on to complete their degree and pursue Graduate Research. As a professor, I have been able to recruit a number of students from my own classes to major or minor in both Ethnic Studies and English.
In addition to teaching, I freelance for Heart & Soul magazine and a number of other magazines and newspapers around the country. I starred in several plays throughout California as a respected and highly praised leading actress. I won first place in the state of California for my dramatic interpretation of August Wilson's play, Fences, and have toured with The San Francisco Mime Troupe and The African American Shakespeare Company. With both theater companies, I starred in leading roles. Pictures from these performances have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
In Washington, DC, I hosted a late-night talk show on WHBC 830 AM called, "Soul Talk with Jamie Walker"—an inspirational talk show about relationships and matters of the soul, and provided commercials, featuring my voice over, for WPFW 89.3FM. Additionally, I have been interviewed on WHUR 96.3FM (and other live radio stations around the country) about my first book, 101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves.
I am a member of The National Association of Black Journalists, Modern Language Association, The Film Collaborative of Los Angeles, and The Golden Key National Honor Society.
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Featured on a CNN panel in 2004 (along with Ruby Dee, the late Ossie Davis, David Driskell, and Esther Cooper Jackson), I have toured and served on panels with numerous writers. My feature stories have graced the covers of The New York Amsterdam News, The Washington Informer, The Afro-American, The Tennessee Tribune, and The San Francisco Bayview. My work has also been featured in The San Francisco Examiner, Women in the Moon, The Oakland Tribune, Mosaic, Rhapsody, The African American Literature Book Club Online, The New Poet's Revolutionary Magazine, BMa: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review, The Quarterly Black Review, and Sable Literary magazine, which is published in London.
Praised for my “superior skill in research,” I was selected (out of thirty young scholars across the United States) by Camille O. Cosby and Renee Poussaint to join the first class of students in The National Visionary Heritage Fellowship Program. The program taught Walker how to perform videotaped documentaries of historic "visionary" elders over the age of 70. Walker’s chosen "visionary" elder was Esther Cooper Jackson," co-founder of Freedomways magazine in 1961 with W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois.
Freedomways magazine chronicled the Civil Rights-Black Arts Movement and featured several well-known Black writers, poets, and artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis, Mari Evans, and Ntozake Shangé.
My written work produced with The National Visionary Leadership Project is now archived at The Smithsonian and featured in a book called A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak (Atria Books 2004), which is edited by Camille Cosby and Renee Poussaint, respectfully.
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My essays and poetry are published in Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press 2002), edited by Tony Medina and Samiya Bashir; It Doesn’t Take a Genius: Five Truths to Inspire Success in Every Student (McGraw-Hill 2005), edited by Tommie Lindsey; I Woke Up and Put My Crown On: The Project of 76 Voices (Publish America 2005), edited by Rochelle Hart; and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (Lit Noire Publishing 2006), edited by DuEwa Frazier.
Poems from my second book, Signifyin’ Me: New and Selected Poems (J.D. Publishing Group 2005) will be published two forthcoming anthologies: Gumbo for the Soul: The Recipe for Literacy in the African American Community and Are All the Women Still White?: Globalizing Women’s Studies.
In addition to teaching on the collegiate level, I have taught K-12 students, as well as creative writing courses, publishing workshops, and playwrighting classes to adults.
I have a wise "Old Soul," am deeply spiritual, intuitive, and funny. Most of all, I am a lover of life and have a "zest" for life. I appreciate being in nature and value the simple things in life: love, home, community, and family. I am currently editing two books. One is an anthology entitled Oscar Micheaux's Women that illustrates how his leading women defied popular stereotypes about Black women's femininity and sexuality during the 1920s and 1930s. The other is critical anthology on Sonia Sanchez, with a foreword by Maya Angelou, which examines her social and political contributions to American poetry and playwrighting. Both poet E. Ethelbert Miller and Amiri Baraka have deemed this long-awaited anthology to be “a landmark collection.”
I am available for interviews and can be reached via email at jdpublishinginfo@gmail.com.
Copyright 2010. Dr. Jamie Walker. All Rights Reserved.