50 Faces Dr. Selena Sanderfer Doss

Each week during Kentucky Humanities' 50th year we will reveal one of our 50 Faces of the Humanities. Tune in here each Monday to hear from citizens throughout the Commonwealth who support and promote the humanities in Kentucky.

Dr. Selena Sanderfer Doss is an Associate Professor of History at Western Kentucky University. Doss has been a faculty member at WKU since 2010.

Dr. Doss won a fellowship from the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery for her project titled “Involuntary Pilgrimage: Black Southerners and Territorial Separatism, 1783-1904.” She spent the spring 2020 semester living and working in the Harlem section of New York City. The Lapidus Center is housed in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library system and one of the premier collections of material related to Black history and culture in the country. Lapidus fellows, along with other Schomburg fellows, receive office space at the Center, and participate in weekly seminar meetings where they read and discuss each other’s scholarly work.
 
Dr. Doss holds bachelor of arts degrees in history and sociology from Fisk University, a master of arts in history from Vanderbilt University, and a Ph.D. in history from the Vanderbilt University.