Karsonya ("Dr. Kaye") Wise Whitehead, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and the award-winning author of Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis; a K-12 master teacher in African American History and an award-winning former Baltimore City middle school teacher; and, a three-time New York Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker.
From 2013-2015, Dr. Whitehead was selected as one of only four experts to participate in the White House's Black History Month Panel co-sponsored by President Obama and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
In 2016, Dr. Whitehead received the Joan B. Kroc's Institute for International Peace Studies "Distinguished Alumni" Award for her work as a peace activist, scholar, filmmaker, writer, and poet. In 2015 her book, Notes from a Colored Girl, was awarded the Darlene Clark Hine Book Award for Best Book in African American women's and gender history from the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and in 2014, it received the Letitia Woods Brown Book Award for Best Edited Book in African American History from the Association of Black Women Historians. In 2013, she was the recipient of Loyola University Maryland's Faculty Award for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship for her work documenting the stories of women who are temporarily experiencing homelessness.
Dr. Whitehead is the author of several book chapters, articles, opinion editorials, and four books, RaceBrave: new and selected works (2016); Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America (2015); the award-winning Notes from a Colored Girl(2014); Sparking the Genius: The Carter G. Woodson Lecture (2014); and, the co-editor of Rethinking Emilie Frances Davis: Lesson Plans for Teaching her 1863-1865 Pocket Diaries (2014). Her forthcoming book, The Emancipation Proclamation: Race Relations on the Eve of Reconstruction (Routledge), and 50 Key Events that Shaped African American History (ABC-CLIO) are due out in 2017.
Dr. Whitehead received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program, her M.A. from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in International Peace Studies, her graduate degree in Advanced Documentary and Narrative Filmmaking from the New York Film Academy, and her B.A. from Lincoln University, PA. Dr. Whitehead can be reached on twitter @kayewhitehead, on FB, or through her website http://kayewisewhitehead.com. She lives in Baltimore with her family.
Editorial and production assistance for Dr. Whitehead's commentaries is provided by Beverly Burke.
