Professor
Robbie
Jean Walker
|
.
.
Drs. Robert C. Evans, Anne C. Little,
and Barbara Wiedemann published a book entitled "Short Fiction: A
Critical Companion" published by Locust Hill Press, West Cornwall, CT (1997)
with the following dedication:
for Robbie
with affection
and respect
Dr.
Robbie Jean Walker has both lived through and embodied a remarkable
historical transition. Born the sixth of eleven children in rural Alabama,
she attended a one room schoolhouse for the first six years of her education.
While going to high school during a period of
segregation, she was bused fifteen
miles each day past two closer schools. She graduated at the top of her
high school class, attended college for two years, then had to postpone
completion of her undergraduate education while she worked for ten years
to save enough money to finish her degree. Once again she graduated at
the top of her class (from Alabama A&M University), and then, at her
first teaching job, instructed every student in grades nine through twelve
at a small Alabama high school. In all, she taught for fourteen years in
various
public high schools, all the while
working on a master's degree at Alabama State University and on a doctorate
at Auburn University.
Dr. Walker joined
the faculty of Auburn University at Montgomery in 1979 as an instructor,
attaining the rank of full professor in 1992. Her extensive publication
record includes articles on the teaching of writing and on African
American Literature. Her book The Rhetoric of Struggle: Public Address
by African American Women (1992) has been used as a text at various colleges
and universities. She is a frequent keynote speaker for the National Coalition
for Equality in Learning, an organization in which she serves as a member
of the national faculty. A member of various honor societies, she is also
a frequent presenter at professional conferences.
Dr. Walker is
currently working on a collection of her own essays and on a literary biography
of Dorothy West, whose contributions to the Harlem Renaissance literary
movement have not to date been appropriately celebrated.
A founder and
for many years a director of the Auburn University at Montgomery Learning
and most recently Dr. Walker served as dean of the university's school
of Liberal Arts.
What no list of
such achievements can convey, however, are the decency, kindness, compassion
and grace of Robbie Jean Walker. She is wise; she is good; she is generous;
she is principled; and she is loved.
She has a ready smile, a quick laugh,
a large heart, and the immense respect of everyone who knows her.
We are honored
to dedicate this book to Robbie Jean.
