Professor of American Studies

Year Joined RCNJ: 2010

Contact Information

• Phone: (201) 684-7241
• Email: jgronbec@ramapo.edu
• Office: B-214
• Office Hours: TF 9:00-9:40 am, 1:15-1:45 pm; W 12:30-1:30 pm

Education:

• PhD. American Studies, University of Texas at Austin 2009

Courses Offered:

• Pursuing the American Dream
• Introduction to American Studies
• American Empire
• Cultures of the American Left

Teaching Interests:

• U.S. Cultural History
• Race and Ethnicity
• U.S. Foreign Relations
• Social Movements

Research Interests:

• U.S. & Latin American Politics
• Culture in the 20th Century

Scholarly Activity:

Books

• Operation Pedro Pan: The Migration of Unaccompanied Children from Castro’s Cuba (Potomac Books)
• Cuba, the United States, and Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 2015; pbk in 2017)
• Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism, ed.,with Elizabeth Abele (Lexington Books, 2015; pbk in 2017)

Recent Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• “Of Violence and Mourning: Sovereignty, Containment, and Modern Governmentality,” Journal of Social Philosophy 50.1(2019): 113-126
• “Culture and Crisis in the Age of Tolerance,” Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture 64.3 (2017): 213-227
• “Rethinking the Nation and the Body Politic:  The Wrestler and the Demise of American Exceptionalism,” in E. Abele and J. Gronbeck-Tedesco, eds., Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism 
• “Documenting The Crime of Cuba: An Américan Left and the 1933 Cuban Revolution,” American Quarterly 66.3 (2014): 633-66

Recent Web Articles

• “Critical Race Theory and the Afterlives of Slavery,” TalkingPointsMemo.com, November 26, 2021
• “The Possibilities of #SOSCuba in U.S.-Cuban Relations,” TheHill.com, July 13, 2021
• “It’s not Trump, It’s Education,” Ozy.com, September 19, 2019
• “Trump’s Losing Gamble on Cuba Could Help Venezuela’s Maduro,” Ozy.com, March 11, 2019
• “The U.S. Has Tried to Reunite Separated Families Before,” Washington Post, June 26, 2018
• “On Refugees: Remembering the Legacy of John F. Kennedy,” The National Memo, February 8, 2017
• “Class Divergences and the Astor Place Election,” OpenDemocracy.net, November 28, 2016
• “Desert Storm at 25: A Grim Anniversary,” CounterPunch.org, Weekend Edition, January 15-17, 2016

Recent Book Reviews

• Review of State of Disaster: The Failure of U.S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change, by Maria Cristina Garcia, Journal of American Ethnic History 43.2: 129-130.
• Review of From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity, by Anne Garland Mahler, American Historical Review 125.1: 208-209.
• Review of America’s Forgotten Colony: Cuba’s Isle of Pines, by Michael E. Neagle, The Americas: The Quarterly Review of Latin American History 75.4 (2018): 804-80
• Review of Fighting over Fidel, by Rafael Rojas, Journal of American Studies 51.2 (2017): E27