Walter Johnson

Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:00-2:30pm and by appointment

Walter Johnson grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and is a member of the Rock Bridge High School Hall of Fame (2006).  Soul by Soul: Life Inside in the Antebellum Slave Market (1999) and River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Mississippi Valley's Cotton Kingdom (2013), were published by Harvard University Press. His autobiographical essay, “Guns in the Family,” was included the 2019 edition of Best American Essays; it was originally published in the Boston Review, of which Johnson is a contributing editor.  His 2003 article "On Agency" is the most cited article in the history of the Journal of Social History and was recently the subject of a special issue of the journal in commemoration of its 20th anniversary. The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States was published in 2020.  In addition to prizes for each of his books, Johnson has been awarded fellowships from the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Studies at Stanford, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Radcliffe Institute.  He is a member of the advisory board of the City of St. Louis Reparations Commission, and a founding member of the Commonwealth Project, which brings together academics, artists, and activists in an effort to imagine, foster, and support social change, beginning in St. Louis.