James J. Kimble is Professor of Communication, Media, and the Arts at Seton Hall University (South Orange, New Jersey, US). He is a historian, documentarian, and curator with interests in domestic propaganda, war rhetoric, and visual imagery.
Professor Kimble is the author of Mobilizing the Home Front: War Bonds and Domestic Propaganda (2006) and Prairie Forge: The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II (2014), as well as co-editor of The 10¢ War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II (2016) and the writer and co-producer of the feature documentary Scrappers: How the Heartland Won World War II. Kimble was also guest curator and catalogue editor for the Norman Rockwell Museum’s traveling exhibition, Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms, which was hosted by seven cities and visited by hundreds of thousands of viewers, including 80 members of Congress. His research—featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the London Times, National Public Radio, Time magazine, People magazine, Smithsonian magazine, Politico magazine, and the television show Mysteries at the Museum—has totaled over one billion media exposures worldwide. In 2021 he collaborated with the University of Nebraska Press to launch a new academic journal, Home Front Studies.
While in residence at the RIAS, Professor Kimble is conducting research and editing chapter drafts of his next book project, The Slogan that Reshaped Society: A Rhetorical Prehistory of the New Deal. The project explores the little-known battle over the meaning of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s new deal phrase during the election of 1932 and the following interregnum. He will also chair a panel in the international conference “A Water’s History of the United States.” Finally, he will be participating in several RIAS seminars and advising resident PhD students.
