KARSONYA WISE WHITEHEAD, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Communication and African and African American Studies,
Loyola University, Maryland
Founding Director, The Emilie Frances Davis Center for Education, Research, and Culture
Dr. Wise Whitehead will be signing copies of her books at the banquet:
Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis($45.00)
Sparking the Genius: The Carter G. Woodson Lecture ($15.00)
Dr. Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead is Assistant Professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland; the Founding Executive Director of The Emilie Frances Davis Center for Education, Research and Culture; a K-12 Master Teacher in African American History; an award-winning curriculum writer and lesson plan developer; and award-winning former Baltimore City middle school teacher; and a three-time New York Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. She 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 and her B.A. from Lincoln University, PA. In 2014, Whitehead was selected to moderate 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 (ASALH); she was one of the featured speakers at the 2014 Youth Mentoring Summit at the U.S. Capital in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington; and she was one of four experts selected nationwide to present at the White House’s 2013 Black History Month Panel co-sponsored by President Obama and ASALH. She has received various fellowships and grants to support her work including a 2012 Gilder Lehrman Fellowship in American History, a 2010 NEH Summer Stipend, and a 2007 SREB Pre-Doctoral Fellowship for Maryland ( only one doctoral fellowship is awarded per state).
She was recently selected as one of the top 25 women professors in Maryland by Online Schools Maryland; and she received the 2013 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 has also received the 2006 Gilder Lehrman Preserve America Maryland History Teacher of the Year Award (sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Maryland State Department of Education); was one of fifty alumni to receive the Distinguished Black Alumni Award from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (2005); and was winner of both the Langston Hughes, David Dip, Etheridge Knight Poetry Award (1999, 2000) and the Zora Neale Hurston Creative Writing Award (1998) from the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing Center at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Whitehead has trained over 2500 K-12 teachers throughout the country in how to become culturally responsive teachers in diverse environments. She wrote and helped to create Dr. Camille Cosby and Renee Poussaint’s Civil Rights Movement website With All Deliberate Speed, including their March on Washington Curriculum Package ; and has written lesson plans and history curriculums for schools, museums, historical societies, cultural centers, and state and local history agents. Dr. Whitehead is the author of several book chapters, articles, and three books, Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis (USC Press, 2014); Sparkling the Genius: The Carter G. Woodson Lecture (Apprentice House, 2014); The Emancipation Proclamation: Race Relations on the Eve of Reconstruction (Routledge, fall 2014); and the co-editor of Rethinking Emilie Frances Davis: Lesson Plans for Teaching her 1863-1865 Civil War Pocket Diaries (Apprentice House). She is a prolific blogger and a frequent guest on radio talk shows. Her website is http://kayewisewhitehead.com/. She lives in Baltimore with her family and dog.