Rate My Professor Jonathan Mercanitti

Jonathan Mercantini serves as Associate Professor in the Department of History at Kean University, where he has taught since 2007. He currently holds the position of Acting Associate Provost for Special Projects and previously served as Acting Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Mercantini earned a Ph.D. in American History from Emory University. Before joining Kean, he taught at the University of Miami, Canisius College, and Princeton University. His research centers on the American Revolution, with particular emphasis on the political culture of South Carolina from 1748 to 1776 and the history of New Jersey in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mercantini is the author of Who Shall Rule at Home: The Evolution of South Carolina’s Political Culture, 1748-1776, published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2007, which was named a finalist for the George C. Rogers Award for outstanding book in South Carolina history. He also wrote The Stamp Act of 1765 for the Broadview Sources Series, released by Broadview Press in 2017. His scholarly articles include “John Kean and the Ratification of the Constitution,” which appeared in the South Carolina Historical Magazine in July 2013, and “John and Susan Kean and the Culture of Slavery in the New Nation,” published in New Jersey History in Spring 2012. Mercantini has secured external grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support research on the history of New Jersey and South Carolina, including the Make History@Kean project exploring William Livingston’s World and the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. He collaborated with the New Jersey Historical Commission on activities marking the 350th anniversary of New Jersey in 2014 and received Emmy nominations from the New York and Mid-Atlantic regions for contributions to the public television series It Happened Here – New Jersey. In addition to his teaching in courses such as the American Revolution, Civil War and Reconstruction, and New Jersey History, Mercantini has delivered public lectures and contributed to editorial and committee work focused on historical preservation and education.