Dr. Karen Chandler is Associate Professor Emerita in the Arts Management Program at the College of Charleston. She has taught in its undergraduate and graduate programs and has also served as director of both programs.

She is Co-Founder of the Charleston Jazz Initiative that documents South Carolina musicians who contributed to jazz in America and Europe.  With a National Endowment for the Arts grant, she served as Executive Producer of LEGENDS, a CD of songs by musicians the initiative is studying. She has been awarded the South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities for her research with the jazz initiative.

Among her most recent publications are “Bin Yah (Been Here): Africanisms and Jazz Influences in Gullah Culture” in Jazz @ 100: An Alternative to a Story of Heroes, W. Knauer, ed. (Frankfurt: WolkeVerlag); and “Prelude to Gershwin: Edmund Thornton Jenkins” in Porgy and Bess: A Charleston Story, H. Greene, ed.