Dr. W. Joye Hardiman, author of The Ra-Surrection From The Chains of Falsehood, is a storyteller, scholar, master teacher, world traveler and Higher Education Architect. Born in Buffalo New York on June 4, 1944 she was introduced to the art, craft and joy of storytelling at an early age by her parents. She attended the Undergraduate Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa and earned a B.A. in Western Classical Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo, a Ph.D. in Ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) Literary Studies and Urban Education from the Union Institute and a certificate of completion from Harvard University’s Management Development Program. 

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She is also classically trained improvisational performer and has been the Artistic Director of several Commedia dell' Arte children companies on both the East and West coast. She was a mime at Woodstock and trained in NYC at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club.

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She has done field studies researching the African Contribution to World Civilization in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Mali, The Gambia, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, South Africa, England, Spain, Portugal, Russia, India, Mexico, Trinidad, Brazil, Panama, Ecuador, Cuba, Haiti, the USA and Canada.

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Her multidisciplinary study of the worldviews, ecologies, histories, cultures and spiritual technologies of people of African descent in both Africa and the African diaspora has resulted in a Fulbright Scholarship, four decades of classroom and community instruction, the design of an urban campus based on the temple/library /universities of Ancient Kemet, published articles in Kemet and the African Worldview edited by Maulana Karenga and Jacob H. Carruthers and Reconstructing Kemetic Culture  edited Maulana Karenga and International Executive Board Membership in the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), she recently retired after 45 year of higher education teaching, administration and institution building. 

 

She is currently the Creative Director of Ancestral Art Works – a creative production company that uses Ancestral Wisdoms to solve Contemporary Problems,  CEO of Hardiman House Inc., an urban sanctuary that hosts and convenes salons and intergenerational conversations that expand the mind, feed the spirit and restore the soul, Host of the YouTube Series – Let the Ancestors Speak and founder of  the Ra-Imaging Exploratorium a training and coaching consultancy.

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All that she does, is with the intentionality of, restoring that which is seen in ruin and making it more beautiful than before.