Reassembling Africa: a leading anthropologist proposes an essential library for understanding the Black Diaspora in the Americas

Black Issues Book Review, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Sheila S. Walker

And Katherine Dunham, the anthropologist, choreographer and dancer, is responsible for codifying and spreading African Diasporan dance around the world. She wrote about her experiences among the Maroons of Jamaica in Journey to Accompong (Greenwood Pub. Group, January 1972) and of her field research on religion and dance in Haiti in Island Possessed (University of Chicago Press, June 1994).

Dr. Sheila S. Walker, Ph.D., is the William and Camille Cosby Endowed Professor in the Social Sciences at Spelman College in Atlanta. She has done extensive field research and participated in cultural activities throughout Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas, and has many scholarly and popular publications. Most recently she edited the volume African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas and a video documentary Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora. Dr. Walker has a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in political science, studied at the Sorbonne and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in anthropology. Dr. Walker offers her expertise through a list of important books about the African Diaspora in "Reassembling Africa" on page 14.

Dr. Sheila S. Walker is William and Camille Cosby Professor in the Social Sciences at Spelman College.