Potter College News

Dr. Selena Sanderfer Doss, an Associate Professor of History at WKU, has been elected to serve on the Kentucky Humanities board of directors. Her board term began on January 1, 2021.

During her term on the 23-person volunteer board, Doss will help set policies, award project grants to community organizations, and participate in fundraising to help meet the growing demand for Kentucky Humanities’ programs. Based in Lexington, Kentucky Humanities and its community partners across the Commonwealth invest more than $1 million annually in support of public humanities programs throughout Kentucky.

Doss has been a faculty member at WKU since 2010. 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 Vanderbilt University.

Doss recently 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.

Kentucky Humanities is a non-profit Kentucky corporation affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is not a state agency, but is a proud partner with the state’s Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet. For information about Kentucky Humanities’ programs and services, visit kyhumanities.org.

Contact: Marianne Stoess, (859) 257-5932