Staring Out to Sea

From 2013-2016, Abigail Perkiss, Ph.D., 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. 

Starting with an advanced Oral History Methods course and continuing through internship credit, grant funding and independent students, these students and she collected nearly eighty interviews, presented together at two professional conferences, helped to organize a public symposium at Kean and partnered with organizations and institutions beyond the university, culminating in a curated exhibit on the storm at the Tuckerton Seaport and Baymen’s Museum.

Perkiss and her students also collaborated with a digital humanities class at Stockton University and computer programming students at Kean to develop an online digital library for the interviews. The interviews are now housed digitally at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky.