Meet the Directors

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Directors

Dr. Jacob A. Zumoff

Co-director Dr. Jacob A. Zumoff is an associate professor and chair of the department of history, philosophy, and religion, and has been at NJCU since 2008. Prior to that he taught at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Northern Mexico. He has a BA from Rutgers University and a PhD from the University of London (both in history).

His scholarship examines how labor movements, left-wing politics, and struggles against racial and ethnic oppression intersect in the Americas. Dr. Zumoff is particularly interested in how local political struggles connected to broader transnational movements and ideas. His current research projects include left-wing politics in Venezuela and the intersection of immigration, the labor movement, and anti-imperialism in Panama.

Dr. Zumoff has taught courses in the history of Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the Second World War in Europe, and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has presented his research at universities or conferences throughout the United States as well in Argentina, Britain, Canada, Catalonia, China, and Mexico.

JACOB ZUMOFF BIO

Dr. Cora Lagos

Center co-director Dr. Cora Lagos is professor of Latin American and Latinx literature and chair of the World Languages and Cultures department at NJCU. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she received a Licenciatura en Letras from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Dr. Lagos moved to the United States, where she completed an M.A. in Latin American literature at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Ph.D. in cultural studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has focused her research and published a book, Confrontando imaginarios: oralidad, pintura y escritura en el México colonial, on the examination of texts which arise out of the conditions of the first encounters in Mesoamerica. The interdisciplinary nature of her work has led her to readings on post-colonial theory, Marxism, subaltern studies, anthropology, and psychoanalysis. Since arriving at NJCU in 2001, Dr. Lagos has focused much of her research and teaching on colonial and contemporary Latin American and Latinx literature, focusing on themes of gender and subalternity. Her present research examines how museum exhibits of pre-Columbian artifacts represent contemporary indigenist cultures in ways that imply they have no present. Dr. Lagos is also a member of �鶹��ý Cares and works in various community projects in the Essex County area.