• Stephen Bronner
  • Stephen Bronner
  • Emeritus
  • Phone: 646-552-0214
  • Bronner CV

  • Specialties:

    Critical Theory, Human Rights, Political Theory

  • Bio:

    Professor Stephen Eric Bronner is a noted political theorist and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and German Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

    Currently, he is Director of Global Relations at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights at Rutgers University, and member of Executive Committee of the UNESCO Chair for Genocide Prevention. Professor Bronner is the Executive Chair of US Academics for Peace and an advisor to Conscience International. His activities in civic diplomacy led him to visit Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, and Darfur. Many of his experiences are discussed in works dealing with internal relations like Blood in the Sand (2005) and Peace out of Reach (2007). Professor Bronner was the recipient of the MEPeace Award by the Network for Middle Eastern Politics in 2011. 

    Along with various teaching awards, the Bronner received the Michael A. Harrington Prize for Moments of Decision (1991) and Honorable Mention for the David Easton Prize, which honored the best work of political theory of the last five years, for Reclaiming the Enlightenment (2004).

    A prolific writer, Professor Bronner has published over 25 books and 200 journal articles, and his work  has been translated in more than a dozen languages. He received the Charles McCoy Lifetime Achievement Prize from the American Political Science Association in 2005.

  • Teaching:

    Recent Undergraduate Courses:

    Marx and Marxist Theory

    The Politics of Bigotry

    Politics & Imperialism

    Critics of Modernity

    Special Topics: Nazi Germany

    Politics, Literature and the Arts

    Recent Graduate Courses:

    Critical Theory & Society

    The Idealist Tradition: German Idealism

    Politics & Existentialism

    Contemporary Political Theory

  • Publications:

    Professor Bronner is a prolific writer. Some of his most recent publications include: The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists (Forthcoming July 2014, Yale University Press), Modernism at the Barricade: Aesthetics, Politics, Utopia (Columbia University Press, 2012), Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011), Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2006) and Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Right-Wing Ambitions, and the Erosion of American Democracy (The University Press of Kentucky, 2005). The writings of Professor Bronner have been translated into more than a half dozen languages.

    A former Chair of the Caucus for a New Political Science, he edited the book series titled Interventions for Westview Press and he is now editing another series, Polemics, for Rowman & Littlefield.

    Professor Bronner is the senior editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture and he serves on the editorial board of five journals, both here and in Europe.

    His articles have appeared in Political Theory, New Politics, Social Research, Telos, along with various other journals. Concerned with the relation between politics and culture, Professor Bronner has authored the novel, A Beggar's Tales (1978).

    Professor Bronner has edited Planetary Politics: Human Rights, Terror, and Global Society (2005), The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (2nd Edition: 1993), and Socialism in History: Political Essays of Henry Patcher (1984), and he is the co-editor of Vienna: The World of Yesterday 1889-1914 (1997), Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist Heritage (2nd Edition, 1988), and Critical Theory and Society (1989). Winner of the Michael Harrington Award for Moments of Decision: Political History and the Crises of Radicalism (1992), his other books include: Leon Blum: A Popular Biography (1986); Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary for Our Times (3rd Printing: 1997); Camus: Portrait of a Moralist (1999); Ideas in Action: Political Tradition in the Twentieth Century (1999); A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Anti-Semitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (2000); Socialism Unbound (2nd Edition, 2001). Imagining the Possible: Radical Politics for Conservative Times and of Critical Theory and Its Theorists, in its second edition, will appear in 2002.

  • Research:

    Professor Bronner's interests range from the ideologies of mass movements to existentialism, politics and culture, philosophical idealism, modern political history and critical theory.