Jacob Remes
Clinical Associate Professor
jar31@nyu.edu
(212) 998-7350
403 - 1 Wash Pl
B.A., History, Yale University, 2002
M.A., History, Duke University, 2006
Ph.D., History, Duke University, 2010
Jacob Remes is a historian of modern North America with a focus on urban disasters, working-class organizations, and migration. In 2021, along with Andy Horowitz, Remes edited Critical Disaster Studies (University of Pennsylvania Press), the first collection about the emerging, interdisciplinary field of critical disaster studies. His first book, Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era (University of Illinois Press, 2016) examines the overlapping responses of individuals, families, civil society, and the state to the Salem, Massachusetts Fire of 1914 and the Halifax, Nova Scotia Explosion of 1917. He has also written scholarly articles on a variety of other subjects ranging from interwar Social Catholicism to Indigenous land rights to transnational printers in the 19th century. His popular writing on subjects relating to his research has appeared in the Nation, Atlantic, Time, Salon, and elsewhere. Before coming to Gallatin, Remes taught at Harvard, Columbia, Duke, and Meiji Universities, and was an assistant professor at SUNY Empire State College. Winner of the Gutman and Forsey Prizes in labor and working-class history, Remes is past executive secretary of the Labor and Working-Class History Association and was the William Lyon Mackenzie King Research Fellow at Harvard. Photo Credit: Nisa Danitz
Edited Volumes
2021
Critical Disaster Studies, co-edited by Jacob Remes and Andy Horowitz, was published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
Performances, Productions, Exhibitions & Releases
2020
Jacob Remes spoke on the COVID Calls/Slow Disaster Podcast, a weekly podcast featuring disaster experts like Remes weighing in on the COVID19 crisis.
Books
2016
Jacob Remes's Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era was published by University of Illinois Press.
Teaching and Research Interests
modern North American history; labor and working-class history; migration; disasters; food and urban agriculture; Canadian studies; urban studies
Recent News
PUBLICATIONS
Critical Disaster Studies, co-edited by Jacob Remes and Andy Horowitz, was published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021.
Remes wrote "How Humans Make Disasters Worse" for the August 31, 2017 issue of Time.
For the fall 2018 issue of the African American Review, Remes wrote “What We Talk About When We Talk About Africville”.
For the February 2018 issue of The American Historian, Remes wrote “International Expertise and Its Discontents: What Disaster History Can Show about the Progressive Era".
AWARDS AND HONORS
In 2020, Remes founded the Initiative for Critical Disaster Studies.
MEDIA
Jacob Remes spoke with Elise von Scheel of CBC's The House for the June 1, 2019, "Is the U.S. safe for asylum seekers?"
Jacob Remes is quoted in “Cinnamon-Raisin Bagels Face a Schmear Campaign in New York,” for the September 13, 2018 issue of The Wall Street Journal.
Remes was quoted in Dionne Anderson’s article “Lessons from Katrina: This
Organization Tries to Get Hurricane Florence Survivors Home Quicker,” on September 27, 2018, for Yes! Magazine.
Remes was quoted in Andrea Shea’s article “As Library Moves to Rowley, Some
Residents tell PEM to Keep the Historic Papers of Salem in Salem,” for the WBUR ARTery on July 13, 2018.
On October 4, 2017, Pacific Standard Magazine interviewed Remes for "'There Are No Natural Disasters': A Conversation With Jacob Remes."
Remes is quoted in the September 27, 2017 CBCNews article "'This doesn't feel like a first-class response': Puerto Ricans slam Trump's claim of 'amazing' aid after Maria."
Remes is quoted in the August 31, 2017 Mic article "Stranded by Hurricane Harvey, these Houstonians hope relief efforts are equal across race and class."
CONFERENCES
Remes organized The Critical Disaster Studies Conference, which was held on September 21-22, 2018, at NYU Gallatin.
Courses
2023 Fall
First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Work, Freedom and Social Change
2022 Spring
2021 Spring
Sovereignty, Interrupted: The Contested Legacies of Montreal’s Quiet Revolution
2021 Fall
