Areas I Teach
Courses Taught
HIST-103 | Western Civilization II: Early Modern Europe
HIST-104 | Western Civilization III: Modern Europe
HIST-230 | The Trial of Galileo
HIST-232 | The Holocaust
HIST-235 | Europe Since World War II
HIST-333 | History of the British Empire
HIST-375 | Age of Atlantic Revolutions
HIST-381 | Historical Thinking
Background
Rick Jobs received his doctorate from Rutgers University, where his training focused on the social, political, and cultural history of modern Europe with an emphasis on France and minor field in twentieth century European social and critical theory. He teaches broadly in modern European and Global history. He is the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and fellowships in support of his research and teaching including the Grace Abbott Book Prize, Outstanding Academic Title from Choice, the William Koren Jr. Prize for the best article in French history, the Arnold and Lois Graves Award in the Humanities, a Bourse Chateaubriand from the French government, NEH grants, and the Fulbright-Schuman Fellowship in European Affairs. In 2011 he was a visiting scholar at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Jobs researches and writes on 20thc French and European social and cultural history, young people and youth, travel and mobility, integration and nationalism, transnational and global, exploration and imperialism. He has been invited to speak about his research in a dozen countries. Most recently, he is the co-author with a Belgian anthropologist of the innovative book In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) which tells the story of a French explorer’s search for the ”lost” Maya deep in the Mexican Jungle in the form of a multimodal comic. His other books include Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after the Second World War (Stanford University Press, 2007) and he is the co-editor of Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For more information, please visit his
Education
PhD in Modern European History, Rutgers University, 2002
MA and BA, Murray State University, 1991 and 1994
Books and Edited Collections
Co-author with Steven Van Wolputte, In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025).
Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe. University of Chicago Press, 2017. (Paperback, 2017)
*awarded the Grace Abbott Book Prize, 2017
Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After the Second World War, Stanford University Press, January 2007. (Paperback, 2009)
*awarded Outstanding Academic Title by Choice, 2007
Co-editor with David M. Pomfret, Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. (Paperback, 2017)
Co-editor with Patrick F. McDevitt, “Kith and Kin: Personal Relationships and Cultural Practice” special issue Journal of Social History Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter 2005).
Articles and Book Chapters
“Das Magische Zentrum des Hippie-Urlaubs: Rucksacktourismus und Gegenkultur,” in Global Europe Underground: Transnationale Netzwerke und globale Perspektiven europaïscher Alternativmilieus, 1965-1985, edited by Detlef Siegfried. De Gruyter Oldenberg, 2025.
“Notes on Sources: Bernard de Colmont,” Journal for the Western Society of French History v.50 2024.
“Youth Tourism,” in The Oxford Handbook for the History of Tourism, edited by Eric Zuelow. Oxford, 2023.
“Towards a Global History,” in Youth in the Age of Empire, edited by David M. Pomfret. Bloomsbury, 2023.
“1972: Destination jeunesse,” in Chronologies européenes, edited by Fabrice Virgili et al. CNRS, 2022.
“Discussion: Tourism and Diplomacy” with Shelley Baranowski, Lisa Pinley Covert, Bertram M. Gordon, Christian Noack, Adam T. Rosenbaum, and Blake C. Scott, Journal of Tourism History 11:1 (April 2019).
“Youth and Young People in Postwar Europe,” in Restless Youth: 70 Years of Growing Up in Europe, edited by Christine Dupont. House of European History, 2019.
“Les Soixante-Routards: Travel, Generation, and 1968,” Modern & Contemporary France 26:1 (2018): 1-14.
“Bonnie Smith and the Mirror of History,” French Politics, Culture & Society 33:2 (summer 2015).
“The Grand Tour of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the Europeanism of 1968,” in May 68: Rethinking France’s Last Revolution, edited by Julian Jackson, James S. Williams, and Anna-Louise Milne. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011.
“Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968,” American Historical Review Vol. 114, No. 2 (April 2009): 376-404.
“Travailleuses familiales et fées du logis. Les jeunes femmes commes agents de modernisation dans la France de l’après-guerre” in Jeunesse oblige: Une histoire des jeunes en France (XIXe-XXIe siècles), edited by Ludivine Bantigny and Ivan Jablonka. Presses universitaires de France, 2009, 137-152.
“Where the Hell are the People?” co-author with Patrick F. McDevitt, Journal of Social History Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter 2005): 309-314.
“Building Community and Reconstructing Citizenship in the Youth and Culture Houses of Postwar France,” Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research Vol. 12, No. 3 (August 2004): 205-220.
“Tarzan Under Attack: Youth, Comics, and Cultural Reconstruction in Postwar France.” French Historical Studies Vol. 26, No. 4 (Fall 2003): 687-725.
*Winner of the 2003 Koren Prize for the best article in French history of any time period in any American, Canadian or European Journal. Awarded by the Society for French Historical Studies.
*reprinted in Global Perspectives on Tarzan: From King of the Jungle to International Icon, edited by Annette Wannamaker and Michelle Ann Abate. Routledge, 2012.
Honors, Awards, Grants and Fellowships
Grace Abbott Book Prize, Society for the History of Children and Youth, 2017
Best Articles of 2017 History Today, 2017
Fulbright-Schuman Fellow for European Affairs at the European University Institute, Florence, 2011
NEH Summer Stipend, 2011, 2015
Elise Elliot Grant, 2015
Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2009
The Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves Award in the Humanities, 2008
Riding the New Wave named Outstanding Academic Title by Choice, 2007
William Koren, Jr. Prize for the best article in French history, Society for French Historical Studies, 2003
Chateaubriand Fellow, French Government, 1997-1998
Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, 鶹Ӱ, 2005
Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 2000-2001
Faculty Development Award, 鶹Ӱ, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2018, 2023
Research/Travel Grant, Rutgers University, 1999
Excellence Fellow, Rutgers University, 1994-1997