Tamara Walker

Tamara J. Walker is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (Crown, 2023). Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, the book reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who left the United States over the course of the past century. Like the talented young comedienne who graced theater stages in Paris and London. And the pair of gifted Black crop scientists who moved with their families for Uzbekistan. There’s also a career woman turned housewife who found herself searching for purpose in Germany, a Peace Corps volunteer discovering his power in Kenya, and so many others. Together, the interwoven stories highlight African Americans’ complicated relationship to the United States and to the world at large. At the Institute, she will organize a series of talks, workshops, and podcast recordings focused on the experiences of African Americans in Paris, past and present.

An historian and Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Tamara J. Walker's scholarship focuses on the history of slavery in Latin America and its legacies in the modern era. In addition to essays published in Gender & History, Slavery & Abolition, Souls, the Journal of Women’s History and elsewhere, she is the author of Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima (Cambridge, 2017), which won the 2018 Harriet Tubman Prize from the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture.