Tamara Walker

In broad terms, Professor Walker’s scholarly interests encompass three interrelated thematic areas: the history of slavery and freedom in Latin America; the process of racial formation in the region; and the ways in which gender shaped the experience of enslavement and racialization. Her work is also inspired by the methodological concern of recovering the subjectivities of enslaved and free people of African descent who rarely had direct access to writing and whose voices were heavily mediated when they did appear on record. 

Professor Walker’s research has received support from the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Association of University Women and the John Carter Brown Library, and has appeared in such publications as Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, Gender & History, and The Journal of Family History.  She is the author of Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing and Status in Colonial Lima (Cambridge University Press, July 2017) and is currently at work on a new book project that explores the relationship between African slavery and piracy in the Southern Pacific during the era of the Manila Galleon trade.