Wendy Walters

Professor and Associate Chair, School of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies

Wendy Walters Headshot

Full-Time

At Emerson since 1999

Contact

Campus

Boston

Department

Writing, Literature and Publishing

Areas of Expertise

Programs

Education

  • B.A., Brown University
  • M.A., University of Pennsylvania
  • Ph.D., University of California, San Diego

Dr. Wendy W. Walters studies African American and African diaspora literature. Her teaching and research interests include Afrofuturism, environmental justice, postcolonial studies, and other interdisciplinary approaches to the study of literary texts.

She is the author of two books, Archives of the Black Atlantic: Reading Between Literature and History (Routledge 2013), and At Home in Diaspora: Black International Literature (U of Minnesota 2005). Recent peer-reviewed publications include an article on Chester Himes and visual culture (PMLA, October 2026); an article on Samuel Delany and energy infrastructure (ISLE, 2024); an article on teaching Afrofuturism in prison (Radical Teacher, Spring 2022); and a chapter on Nnedi Okorafor’s short fiction in the volume Oil Fictions (Penn State UP 2021).

In addition to offering courses in Writing, Literature and Publishing, Dr. Walters also teaches the Honors Program Pre-Thesis Seminar and Senior Thesis Seminar, as well as courses at MCI-Norfolk through Emerson Prison Initiative.

Courses
  • Honors Thesis
  • Honors Pre-Thesis Seminar
  • Topics in US Multi Literature
  • Afrofuturism: Black Speculative Fiction
  • MA Project
Academic Work
  • 2026, “Chester Himes and Visual Culture: Photographic Feeling in Yesterday Will Make You Cry,” forthcoming in PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association), vol. 141, no. 5
  • 2024, “‘We, in some strange power’s employ …’: Science Fiction and the Aesthetics of Energy Transition,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, isae035
  • 2022, “Time in Afrofuturism, Classroom Time, and Carceral Time,” Radical Teacher, special issue, Teaching Afrofuturism: Race, Erasure, and Corona, No. 122: 13-20
  • 2013, Archives of the Black Atlantic: Reading Between Literature and History, Routledge, Research in Atlantic Studies Series
  • 2005, At Home in Diaspora: Black International Writing, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Critical American Studies Series