Rick Jobs

Research Interests

In 2002, I received my doctorate from Rutgers University where my training focused on the social, political, and cultural history of modern Europe with an emphasis on France and a minor field in twentieth-century European social and critical theory. I am the recipient of several fellowships including the Bourse Chateaubriand awarded by the French government. Currently, I am completing my book “Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After World War II,” which examines how the discursive concept of youth and the social reality of young people served as a means of cultural reconstruction in France during the Fourth Republic (1944-1958). This is a history of how and why the meaning and role of youth changed in French society between the end of the war and the advent of the 1960s. The significance of my research is that I use age as an analytic tool comparable to race, class, or gender that explores the meaning of categories like “youth” and “adult.” More broadly, my research offers a French case study to explore the dynamic relationship between age-based social groups in the West immediately after World War II.

Presently, I am editing a collection of essays with Pat McDevitt of the University of Buffalo entitled “Kith and Kin: New Perspectives on the History of Human Relations in the West.” Also, I am in the early stages of my next large project, “Backpack Ambassadors: Youth, Travel, and European Integration” which I intend to be a short monograph suitable for classroom use to teach the process of postwar integration in Western Europe through a socio-cultural history of youth and travel—hostel systems, Eurail passes, music tours, concerts and clubbing, summer work programs, social and political movements, EU initiatives, exchange programs, and so on.

Course Offerings

HUM-100 First Year Seminar
HIST-102 Western Civilization II: Renaissance to World War II
HIST-232 The Holocaust
HIST-235 Europe Since World War II
HIST-237 The Rise and Fall of European Socialism on Film
HIST-333 Imperialism and Decolonization
HIST-335 The Era of the First World War
HIST-338 The Era of the French Revolution
HIST-435 1968: Youth and Social Change in the World
HIST-490 Senior Research Seminar