Chris Walker

Chris Walker, an artist and an experienced and influential leader in the arts on campus, has been named the new director of the Division of the Arts in summer 2021. Walker is a professor in the School of Education’s Department of Dance, as well as the founding artistic director of First Wave, a nationally prominent scholarship program known for pushing the boundaries of poetry, dance, theater and art.

Walker is a multi-hyphenate contemporary dance and performance artist. Rooted in “Resistance Aesthetics,” Walker’s work draws upon the danced rituals, mas traditions, and embodied performance history of the African diaspora. His research intersects dance choreography for the concert stage with collaborations with visual and performance artists for museum, alternate spaces, professional theatre, and video/film, as well as developed the pedagogical framework known as the First Wave Process.