Pembroke Center

Johanna Fernández is assistant professor at Baruch College and teaches 20th Century U.S. history, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African-American history. Johanna is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, February 2020), a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. She is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015). With Mumia Abu-Jamal she co-edited a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy, titled The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor (Routledge, 2014). Johanna is also the writer and producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (BigNoise Films, 2010). She directed and cocurated ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York, an exhibition in three NYC museums cited by the New York Times as one of the year’s Top 10, Best In Art. 

Fernández earned an A.B. in literature and American civilization from Brown University and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.