Johnson, Walter 1967-

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Johnson, Walter 1967-

PERSONAL: Born 1967. Education: Princeton University, Ph.D., 1995.

ADDRESSES: Home— NY. Office— Department of History, Harvard University, Center for Government and International Studies—South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail— johnson2@fas. harvard.edu.

CAREER: New York University, New York, NY, professor of social and cultural analysis, history; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, professor of history and African American studies.

AWARDS, HONORS: Avery O. Craven Prize, Organization of American Historians, 2000; Frederick Jackson Turner Award (cowinner), Organization of American Historians, for Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market, 2000; SHEAR Book Prize, Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, 2000; John Hope Franklin Prize, American Studies Association, 2000; Francis B. Simkins Award (cowinner), Southern Historical Association, 2001.

WRITINGS

Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

(Editor) The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2005.

Contributor of articles to periodicals and anthologies, including Lincoln Center Theater Review, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Social History, Law and Social Inquiry, and New Perspectives on American Slavery.

SIDELIGHTS: Walter Johnson provides a penetrating look at the horrors of slavery in his book Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. The author begins his study in the 1820s, when the institution of slavery was strengthened by a cotton boom in the South. Between the 1820s and the 1850s, approximately one million slaves were marched from the Atlantic coast, where farmland was becoming exhausted from tobacco cultivation, to the fertile new cotton fields of the Mississippi Valley. The hub of the slave trade was the market in New Orleans, and this is the central focus of Johnson’s book. Using letters, court records, slave narratives, and other documentation, the author portrays dealers, traders, auctioneers, and slaves in very personal terms. Soul by Soul is “a superior examination of the speculation in slaves as individuals conducted it,” stated Gilbert Taylor in Booklist.A Publishers Weekly writer remarked: “The evil business of slavery has seldom been exposed with so much humanity and insight as in this eloquent study.” Randall M. Miller, assessing the book in Library Journal, called it “the fullest, most penetrating examination of the antebellum slave market to date.”The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, which Johnson edited, collects a series of essays addressing the institution of slavery in North and South America. John David Smith, in a contribution for the North Carolina Historical Review, called the work “a useful collection that historians of slavery will welcome.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, October, 2001, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, review of Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market, p. 1359; June, 2005, review of The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, p. 916.

American Literature, September, 2002, David Barry Gaspar, review of Soul by Soul, p. 637.

Black Issues Book Review, November, 2000, review of Soul by Soul, p. 66.

Book World, February 27, 2000, review of Soul by Soul, p. 2; December 3, 2000, review of Soul by Soul, p. 2.

Booklist, February 15, 2000, Gilbert Taylor, review of Soul by Soul, p. 1077.

Books & Culture, November-December, 2001, Randal M. Jelks, “Slavery and Broken Souls,” p. 34.

Business History Review, winter, 2005, David Eltis, review of The Chattel Principle, p. 863.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 2000, review of Soul by Soul, p. 1876.

Ebony, April, 2000, “Ebony Bookshelf,” review of Soul by Soul, p. 20.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, June, 2000, review of Soul by Soul.

Historian, summer, 2001, review of Soul by Soul, p. 808; summer, 2001, John Zaborney, review of Soul by Soul, p. 836; spring-summer, 2002, Robert Hunt, review of Soul by Soul, p. 758.

History: Review of New Books, spring, 2000, Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., review of Soul by Soul, p. 106.

Journal of American History, September, 2001, Dylan Pennigroth, review of Soul by Soul, p. 644.

Journal of American Studies, December, 2001, review of Soul by Soul, p. 535; December, 2002, Emily West, review of Soul by Soul, p. 527.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 2001, Gavin Wright, review of Soul by Soul, p. 469.

Journal of Southern History, August, 2001, review of Soul by Soul, p. 649.

Journal of the Early Republic, spring, 2001, Steven Deyle, review of Soul by Soul, p. 184.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1999, review of Soul by Soul, p. 1716.

Labour/Le Travail, spring, 2003, Alvin Finkel, review of Soul by Soul, p. 344.

Library Journal, November 15, 1999, Randall M. Miller, review of Soul by Soul, p. 80.

New York Review of Books, November 2, 2000, George M. Frederickson, review of Soul by Soul, p. 61.

New Yorker, March 13, 2000, Nicholas Lemann, review of Soul by Soul, p. 93.

North Carolina Historical Review, January, 2006, John David Smith, review of The Chattel Principle, pp. 110-111.