Walls received the University of South Carolina’s Russell Research Award in spring 2010. She won the
Merle Curti Award for best book in American intellectual history by the Organization of American Historians in April 2010. She received a
Guggenheim Fellowship in May 2010. In October 2010, she won the Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Award for the best book in literature and science by the
Society for Literature, Science and the Arts. Walls received the
Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize for her book,
The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America, on January 7, 2011, at the MLA’s annual convention. She studied at
University of Washington earning a B.A. for English/Creative Writing in 1976 and an M.A. for English in 1978. She earned a Ph.D. from
Indiana University in American Literature in 1992. Before going to University of South Carolina, she taught at Indiana University and
Lafayette College. ==References==