In Perkiss’ classes, she guides students through thinking about the processes of change-making, the evolution of ideas and actions, and the ways in which context, perspective, and evidence shape our understanding of the human predicament. She asks them to look at history as a series of deliberate decisions by individuals and the intended and unintended consequences that emerge as a result of those decisions. She wants students to leave each semester with an understanding that the world in which they live was not a naturally occurring enterprise. In her classes, to study history is to recognize that the present was not an inevitability.
Teaching in the News
Students Delve into History of Pandemics and COVID-19 Experiences, March 30, 2021
Black History Makes Students Become Authors, Kean Tower, March 1, 2018
Kean Professor Collaborates with Hip H’Opera on Oral History Project, September 18, 2017
The Un/Sung Stories of We Shall Not Be Moved, September 14, 2017
Remembering Superstorm Sandy after One Year, Kean Tower, November 11, 2013
Oral History Projects Document Hurricane Sandy, Perspectives on History, October 2013
Kean Students Cultivate Important Bonds through Oral History, Kean News October 21, 2013
Tweeting the Debates, Kean News, October 17, 2012
Students Inhabit History, Kean News, November 15, 2011
Acting Out: A Professor at Kean Reenacts Events from History, Kean Tower, October/November 2011
Courses
American Law and Liberty
Campus History as Public History
Civil Society in America
Emergence of Law in Society
Historical Methods
History and Memory
History of the Black American, Pre-1900
Legacies of Slavery
Junior Historiography Seminar (also taught as History of Now)
Modern Civil Rights Movements
Oral History Methods
Perspectives in History (Praxis II Preparatory Class)
Public History Seminar
Post-Colonial African Genocide (cross-listed with MA program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies)
Reacting to the Past Game Development
Senior Research Seminar
The American City
Twentieth Century Black History
U.S. History, Post-1877
Worlds of History
Writing Black History for Kids
