Rinaldo Walcott

Rinaldo Walcott is a Black Canadian academic and writer. Currently, he is the Director of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. He was employed as an associate professor at OISE/University of Toronto in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. He was an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at York University in 2000. Walcott's work focuses on Black Studies, Canadian Studies, Cultural Studies, Queer Theory and Gender Theory, and Diaspora Studies. He is the Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies.

Walcott's work recognizes that "articulating Canadian blackness is difficult not because of the small number of us trying to take the tentative steps towards writing it, but rather because of the ways in which so many of us are nearly always preoccupied with elsewhere and very seldom with here". In this comment, Walcott highlights the dearth of Black Canadians writing about Black Canadian experiences and expressions, and points to his further assertion that a belief that "something important happens here [in Canada]" is a necessary precursor to increasing the scholarly engagement with Black Canadian experiences and expressions. Walcott's explicit engagement with Blackness in Canada and Canadian experiences of Black themes therefore represent foundational work in these areas. The uniqueness of Walcott's scholarship is also connected to his analysis of popular culture as it relates to issues of race, gender, sexuality, and nationality.

Walcott has published several books and articles spanning many issues concerning Blackness in Canada. His work draws on a variety of sources in order to address these issues including the poetry of Dionne Brand, George Elliot Clarke, and M. Nourbese Philip; the rap of Maestro Fresh Wes, Devon, and the Dream Warriors; films such as Clement Virgo's Rude and Stephen Williams' Soul Survivor and Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine; and other aspects of popular culture including critical attention paid to the opening theme for the television show Fresh Prince of Belair.

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