Karen Kossie-Chernyshev - Department of History, Texas Southern University

This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.Today's conversation is with Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, who teaches in the Department of History at Texas Southern University She is a fifth-generation Texan and the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the field of history from a Texas institution (Rice University). Her research focuses on African American women’s intellectual history, African American religion, and topics in the African Diaspora.  Her edited works include Recovering Five Generations Hence:  The Life and Writing of Lillian Jones Horace (Texas A&M University Press, 2013) and Angie Brown (Outskirts Press, 2017). Kossie-Chernyshev is the founding director of SWATH, an interdisciplinary summer workshop on African American Texas History for local K-16 teachers, works on the board of the Harris County historical commission, is founder of the Lillian B Horace symposium, serves as executive director of USLEEP America, and just celebrated her 50th year as a church musician.