MakeHISTORY@Kean


In 1944, Newark State Teachers College graduate Anne McCauley made history by joining the WAVES, the US Naval Women's Reserve.  She trained at Hunter College as a gunnery instructor and was stationed along the Gulf of Mexico.  In 2017, Kean University History Honors students are writing her history.  History Honors students have scanned and transcribed over 800 letters from Newark State Teachers College students and alumni serving in World War II now available at: www.WorldWarIIScrapbook.com.    This collaborative project in the digital humanities showcases how Kean University undergraduates are making history by conducting original research, and making history by using new technologies to share that history!

Below are just a few of the Kean History student research projects.  Separately, they each use original primary sources, many housed here at Kean, to reconstruct and share important chapters in New Jersey, American, and World history. Collectively, they illustrate how you, too, can MakeHISTORY@Kean.

The BlacKeaning :Using the university's special collections as well as primary sources from local archives, students in this class worked to build an institutional history of race relations at Kean, telling the story of the dynamics of race and power at the school and on its grounds over the past 250 years.

Staring out to Sea: From 2013-2016, Dr. Abigail Perkiss worked with Kean undergraduates to develop Staring out to Sea, a longitudinal oral history project documenting the relief and recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy along New Jersey’s Bayshore.