Walter Johnson is a leading American historian specializing in the history of slavery, capitalism, and imperialism.
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Walter Johnson was born in Columbia, Missouri, the first son of Walter Johnson, Sr. and Mary Angela Johnson. His father was a professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, and his mother was the director of the Children's House Montessori School.
Johnson graduated from the Rock Bridge High School in 1984, and was inducted into its hall of fame in 2006.[1] He graduated from Amherst College in 1988;[2] from the University of Cambridge in 1989; and from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in 1995.
Johnson taught history at New York University, where he also directed the American Studies program, until 2006.[3] He currently teaches U.S. history at Harvard University, where he is Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies.[4]
Professor Johnson also directs the Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics, an initiative founded in 2001 by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. JWE seeks to support the work of younger scholars who integrate ethical, political and economic dimensions of human development.
In 2007, Johnson was an advising scholar for the award-winning, PBS-broadcast documentary Prince Among Slaves, produced by Unity Productions Foundation.
Professor Johnson has received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship as well as fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, an ACLS-Burkhardt Fellowship, and a Mellon Fellowship in Cultural Studies at Wesleyan University.
His first book, Soul by Soul: Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, won multiple awards, including the Francis B. Simkins Award (as co-winner) from the Southern Historical Association, the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association, the SHEAR Book Prize from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize (as co-winner) from the Organization of American Historians, the Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and the Thomas J. Wilson Prize from Harvard University Press. It was also a selection of the History Book Club.