Keisha-Khan Y. Perry was born in Kingston, Jamaica and migrated to the United States at the age of 10. She became a star field hockey player in middle and high school, and developed a passion for learning languages. She received a Bachelor of Science in Spanish and a Bachelor of Arts in Women's Studies from Georgetown University and a Masters and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin.
Since the start of her career, she has been a professor of Africana Studies at Brown University where she taught classes focused on and researched questions of race, gender and politics in the Americas, urban geography and questions of citizenship, intellectual history and disciplinary formation, and the interrelationship between scholarship, pedagogy and political engagement.
Perry's first book, Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), is an ethnographic study of black women's activism in Brazilian cities, specifically an examination of black women's participation and leadership in neighborhood associations, and the re-interpretations of racial and gender identities in urban spaces. The book is the result of more than a decade of research collaborations with local activists in the Gamboa de Baixo (also called Gamboa) neighborhood of the city of Salvador that is at the heart of the work.
Her research has been supported by numerous awards over the years such as the National Science Foundation and Fulbright fellowships, Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award, Pembroke Center Seed Grant for Collaborative Research, Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice Faculty Collaborative Research Award, Cogut Institute for the Humanities Faculty Grant, and Watson Center for Public and International Affairs Collaboration Grant. Most recently, Perry received the Brown University Swearer Center Inaugural Faculty Award for Engaged Research in 2019.
Perry's courses have focused on diaspora, social movements, research methods, black feminist thought, urban politics, and gendered racial thought in Brazil. She considers teaching her primary vocation, and is committed to mentoring students to succeed in their respective fields and in supporting them in planning for advanced education and professional lives beyond college and graduate school. At Brown, she received the CareerLAB Comfort and Urry Prize for Leadership, Career Advising, and Motivation (2017) and the Graduate School Faculty Award for Advising and Mentoring (2018) in recognition of this advising work with both undergraduate and graduate students.
In 2021, Perry resigned from Brown University, accepting a new position as the Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
In addition to building her life as a scholar, activist, and teacher, Perry is also the mother to a young boy who is a fierce hockey and chess player.
*This biography was slightly edited from the "About" page on Perry's personal website: https://www.keishakhanperry.com/about.
This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, scholar of race, gender, and politics in the Americas with a particular focus on Black women's activism, urban geography and questions of citizenship, feminist theories, intellectual history and disciplinary formations. Materials include notebooks, correspondence, conference materials, draft writings, and print material. This collection dates from 1981 to 2025 and is arranged into 9 series.
Series 1, BIOGRAPHICAL, 1997 – 2025, includes articles about Perry, awards she has received, and notebooks with handwritten notes from her time in graduate school. Topics within these notebooks include "Critical Race Theory," "politics and incarceration," and notes from a trip to Mexico. Original folder titles are in quotations, all other folder titles were created by the processor. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 2, ADMINISTRATIVE, 1998 – 2025, includes professional correspondence, event materials from Brown University's Africana Department, and semester schedules. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 3, CONFERENCES, 1981 – 2025, includes programs, schedules, and flyers, for various conferences that Perry attended. Conferences include "Aesthetics of Blackness: What it Means to be Black in America Today," "Cotas e Outras Ações Afirmativas para o Negro no Mercado de Trabalho," and "Mapping for Change? Cartographies of the Urban: Intersectionality and Climate Change Adaptation." This series is arranged alphabetically by conference title.
Series 4, TEACHING, 2009 – 2023, includes syllabi, hand written notes, and annotated readings, for courses taught by Perry. Courses include "Africana Studies and Interdisciplinarity," "Theorizing the Black Diaspora," and "Transnational and Diasporic Feminisms." This series is arranged alphabetically by course title and then chronologically by year.
Series 5, WRITINGS AND RELATED, 2003 – 2025, is arranged into 2 sub-series.
Series 5, sub-series 1, WRITINGS BY PERRY, 2003 – 2024, includes typed drafts of articles, books, and talks, by Perry. Titles include Black Women Against the Land Grab, "Daqui não Saio, Daqui Ninguém me Tira," and "Afrikin-Black History Month." Also included are flyers for Perry's talks. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by record type then by title.
Series 5, sub-series 2, WRITINGS BY OTHERS, 2003 – 2025, includes photocopies and printouts of articles and chapters by other scholars that are annotated by Perry. Titles include "Color Blindness, History, and the Law" by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, "Fashioning Obligation: Indebted Servitude and the Fetters of Slavery" by Saidiya Hartman, "'Fear of a Black Planet:' Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990s" by Tricia Rose, "New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed" by Chela Sandoval, and "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth Century Cultures" by Ann Laura Stoler. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by author's last name then by title.
Series 6, SUBJECT FILES, 1999 – 2024, primarily includes booklets, pamphlets, and handwritten notes from Otros Saberes, a section of the Latin American Studies Association for which Perry has served as a research consultant, written papers, and given lectures. Topics including "social policy in Brazil" and "Women's Studies" are also represented in this series. This series is arranged alphabetically by topic then by record type.
Series 7, PRINT MATERIAL, 1988 – 2025, includes booklets, magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and pamphlets. Titles include "Caros Amigos," "Povos Indigenas e Meio Ambiente Amapá e Norte do Pará," and "Viver Melhor: Programa de Melhorias Urbanas e Habitacionais." This series is arranged alphabetically by record type then by title.
Series 8, AUDIO VISUAL MATERIALS, 1998 – 2007, contains cassette tapes, CDs, and VHS tapes. Titles include "Angela Davis," "Grupo de Mujeres," and "Claiming Open Spaces." This series is arranged alphabetically by record type then by title written on the carrier.
Series 9, RESTRICTED, 2001 – 2025, contains correspondence, handwritten notes, and annotated dissertation materials of Ph.D. students whom Perry advised. This series is closed until January 1, 2070, after which date all materials in this series will become available. This series is arranged alphabetically by student's last name.
Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Keisha-Khan Y. Perry papers, Ms.2021.002, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
This collection is arranged into 9 series.
There are no restrictions on access, except for Series 9, RESTRICTED, which is closed until January 1, 2070, after which date all materials in this series will become available. The collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.
Advance notice is required to view audiovisual media and born-digital records. Audiovisual media and born-digital records in this collection may not have been reformatted yet. Researchers may request access to copies by contacting the John Hay Library with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed to hay@brown.edu.
Gift of Keisha-Khan Y. Perry beginning in 2021 as part of the Black Feminist Theory Project.