Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway took a brief break from his administrative duties to help a television network put together a program that focuses on an area of his expertise.

On Wednesday, PBS broadcast an American Masters program on the life and career of Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston is a renowned black author and the focus of Hemenway’s early work as a professor.

“I was really interested in Hurston because of reading ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,'” Hemenway said. “That was the first step toward eventually writing her biography that was published in 1978.”

That biography and his other research led PBS to reach out to Hemenway. Officially a consultant to the project, he also was interviewed on camera about Hurston.

“This is a production really about Hurston’s life,” Hemenway said. “She grew up in an all-black town in Florida and her parents both died. She ended up going north to what’s now Morgan State University. Then in 1925 she went to New York to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.”

Hemenway said he enjoyed the work with PBS because it gave him a chance to step back into the type of work that started him in academia.