The Philadelphia University Centre for Teaching Innovation and Nexus Learning director highlighted techniques used during slavery and the American Civil Rights Movement to rebel against oppression.
Arson, damaging property, working slowly, and later more peaceful forms of protest, such as sit-ins, boycotts, and law changes were discussed, stimulating ideas about what real freedom is, and why it is important to protect and fight for it.
"It showed that people working together are what makes a difference," she said, following the presentation.
Dr Roydhouse is in Dunedin this week to attend her Otago Girls' High School class reunion of 3S (1962) and to speak to pupils.
She was the first woman to be awarded the James B. Duke Commonwealth Fellowship (1972) to study at Duke University, North Carolina, where she studied history.
Each year there was one scholarship awarded to students from Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
She said at the time, she did not think much of the fellowship. It was only when she became aware of the difficulty women faced in graduate school and university teaching that she realised she had been a pioneer.
Dr Roydhouse has been lecturing at Philadelphia University since 1984, where she has taught American and British history; worked in a programme helping public school teachers with history and writing in class; created a common core curriculum for all students at the university; been Dean of the School of Liberal Arts; and, more recently, had started the Centre for Teaching Innovation.
She has also written many pieces on the history of Southern US women and suffrage, on labour issues, worker education for women, and more recently on Pennsylvania state.
"It has been a busy and rich career, looking back on it," she said.
"I didn't really know what being a New Zealander was until I left home at the age of 22."
Dr Roydhouse said she had been looking forward to returning to Otago Girls' High School.
"The atmosphere of an all-girls school was central to my life and career with its gift of learning free of the turmoil of gender relations in those formative years," she said.
