Matthew Jacobs

Matt Jacobs is Associate Professor of contemporary U.S. and international history in the Department of History at the University of Florida, and also serves as the Director of the International Studies Program for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Director of Undergraduate Academic Programs for the University of Florida International Center. He received his Ph.D. in 2002 in U.S. History with a specialty in Foreign Relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his M.A. in 1996 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his B.A. in 1993 from Cornell University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on twentieth century U.S. foreign relations, particularly with the Middle East, and contemporary international and world history. He has received the Department of History’s John K. Mahon Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2004-2005), the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award (2009-2010), and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty Advisor/Mentor of the Year Award (2013-2014).

Professor Jacobs’ first book, entitled Imagining the Middle East: The Building of An American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967, was published by the University of North Carolina Press hardcover in summer 2011 and in paperback in summer 2014. An Arabic language edition (Sutour Publications) and an English language edition (American University of Cairo Press) were released simultaneously in the Middle East. The book examines the ways in which an informal network of specialists in academia, business, the government and the media interpreted the Middle East and the United States’ role there through the middle half of the twentieth century. He published an early version of a portion of this work that focused on interpretations of Islam in Diplomatic History (September 2006).

Professor Jacobs has begun work on three new projects. The first, tentatively titled Islam and US, investigates official and unofficial U.S. responses to the rise of political Islam as a global phenomenon since 1960. Thus, the work will deal with U.S. involvement in Africa and Asia as well as the Middle East. The second project highlights the struggles the United States has experienced responding to the various cases of the “Arab Spring” by examining how the different uprisings exposed specific contradictions in U.S. policy toward the Middle East that have evolved over the last several decades. The third project uses sports as a vehicle to examine critical issues in post-1945 international history (i.e., colonialism/post-colonialism, the international economy, sports as an arena for the prevention and/or extension of international conflict, etc.).

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