I’m a historian of 20^th and 21^st century international affairs who specializes in the history of ideas, the history of emotions, and in U.S. and Middle East history. My book “Chains of Vengeance: The United States, the Middle East, and the Wars of Terrorism, 1967-2021” examines the rise of vengeance in U.S.-Middle East relations in the latter decades of the twentieth century and the consequences of this development for the twenty-first century. Using Arabic, French, and English language sources from archives in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Great Britain, and the United States, I detail the rise of vengeance in U.S.-Middle East history whereby actors who were unequal in power pursued what they believed to be reciprocal retribution against perceived adversaries over many years. The book’s broad scope allows for comparison of actors not typically included in the same analytical frame, such as those of Palestinian revolution, Shi‘i awakening, and Sunni transnational jihad, and of U.S. administrations from Lyndon Johnson’s to Joseph Biden’s. The book connects insights from emerging work on emotions in international history to one of the most consequential examples of multi-sided, multi-generational, globalized revenge in history.

I’ve begun a new project on the figure of the Cassandra in international history— those individuals who accurately forecasted disaster but weren’t listened to. I ask why such actors were able to foresee calamity and why they were ignored.

My research has appeared in the International History Review, Texas National Security Review, and Diplomatic History, among others, in addition to New Lines Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post. I’ve held post-doctoral fellowships at the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University, and at the U.S. Naval War College.

I offer courses in international affairs, history of the United States in the world, U.S. history, and Middle East history. I’ve previously taught at Northwestern University, Boston University, Drake University, Wake Forest University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I love teaching and I’m excited to make connections with undergraduates and graduates.

EDUCATION

PhD     History, Northwestern University, 2017

Dissertation: “Chains of Vengeance: The United States and Anti-Imperialism in the Middle East, 1967-2001”

Committee: Michael Sherry, Henri Lauzière, Daniel Immerwahr, Michael Allen, Carl Petry

MA      History, Northwestern University, June 2010

BA      History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2003

PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENT        

2023-Present               Visiting Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University

2021-2023                   Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, U.S. Naval War College

2020-2021                   Visiting Adjunct Professor, Northwestern University

2020-2021                   Visiting Adjunct Professor, Drake University

2019-2021                   Lecturer, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

2019-2020                   Assistant Professor of Humanities, Boğaziçi University

(Cancelled for political reasons by Turkish government in August

2019)

2018-2019                   Post-Doctoral Fellow, Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University                                              

AWARDS AND HONORS

                        2018               The Harold Perkin Dissertation Award for the Best Dissertation of the Year, Northwestern University History Department

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

                        2015                Buffet Institute Dissertation Research Travel Award

                        2014-15           T.H. Breen Graduate Fellowship, Chabraja Center for Historical Studies

                        2009-2014       University Fellowship, Northwestern University (5-year funding package)

                        2013                Research Travel Grant, History Department, Northwestern University

                        2012                Graduate School Research Grant, Northwestern University

                        2011                Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Language and Area Studies Summer

                                                Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Arabic)       

2010                FLAS Language and Area Studies Summer Fellowship, University of

                         Wisconsin-Madison (Arabic)  

PUBLICATIONS

2023  Alex Hobson, “‘A Lot of People Watching’: Understanding the Theater of Terrorism,” Diplomatic History, Volume 47, Issue 4, September 2023, 561-593

2020  Alex Hobson: “Creating a World Stage: Revolution Airport and the Illusion of Power,” The International History Review, Volume 42, Issue 5, 930-950

NOTABLE PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS  

2023 Alex Hobson, “The Unraveling of Jimmy Carter’s Middle East,” New Lines Magazine, April 28, 2023

2020 Alex Hobson, “An Eye for an Eye Doesn’t Make Americans Safer,” Foreign Policy, February 4, 2020

WORK IN PROGRESS

Chains of Vengeance: The United States, the Middle East, and the Wars of Terrorism, 1967-2021 (Book manuscript positively reviewed, revised, and resubmitted for University of North Carolina Press)

“‘Hamlet of Nations’: Revenge Narratives and Reagan’s Response to Terrorism” (Journal article to be submitted to Journal of American History)

“‘White Rage’?: The Decoupling of International and Domestic Terrorism in the Age of Reagan” (Journal article to be submitted to the Journal of Modern American History)

 “From Decolonization to Recolonization: Perim Island and the Fallacies in our Periodization Empire” (Journal article to be submitted to the Journal of Global History)

“Security State Realism: The Aesthetic of the War on Terror” (Journal article to be submitted to Humanity)

 “Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah and the Fragility of U.S. Power in the Middle East” (Journal article to be submitted to the   International Journal of Middle East Studies)                

 “Secular Jihad? Wadi‘ Haddad and Third World Revolution” (Journal article to be submitted to Journal of Palestine Studies) 

INVITED LECTURES

 “Terrorism,” Defense Institute of International Legal Studies, Newport, RI, March 17, 2023

CONFERENCE ACTIVITY

Conferences  Organized

2015  Insurgencies, Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies Graduate Student Conference, Northwestern University

Papers Presented

 2023  “Cassandras of Counterterrorism,” The Rising Tide of Terror: Decolonization and  Global North Responses to International Terrorism,” SHAFR Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C. (June 2023)

 2022   Sheikh Muhammad Fadlallah and the Fragility of U.S. Power in the Middle East in the 1980s,” A Thumb on the Scale: Exploring the Limits of U.S. Narratives of Neutrality in the Middle East after Camp David, Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Denver, (December 1-4)

 2022 “From Imperial Post to Strategic Chokepoint: The Bab al-Mandab and the Fallacies of Periodizing Empire,” The Global History of War and Empire, University of Amsterdam (November 24-25, 2022)

 2022 “‘White Rage’?: Vengeance in Ronald Reagan’s Response to  Faces Da Guerra,” Universidade de Aveiro (September 29=30)

 2021 “Payback as Liberation: Revolt against U.S. Empire in the Middle  East during the 1980s,” Geographies of Revolution, American Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico (October 7-10)

 2020  “ Decolonization and American Empire in the Middle East,” Decolonization at Sixty: Borderlands and Violence, Boston University (March 18[Postponed])                     

 2019 “Beyond Fear: Emotional Communication in Osama bin Laden’s Jihad,”  Future of Democracy in a Digital Age, Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies, University of Bonn, Germany (September  26-28)

2018 “The Transnational Origins of the Global War on Terror,” Conceptualizations of Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Recent History, SHAFR Annual  Meeting, Philadelphia (June 21)

2017 “The Creation of the Essential Terrorist, 1974-1986 Ideological Transnationalism in U.S.-Middle East Relations, SHAFR Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. (June 23)

2016 “The Sky is Not the Limit: How the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Hijacking Campaign Reshaped Revolutionary and Counterterrorist Imaginaries, 1968-1972.” The Politics of Hijacking, SHAFR Annual Meeting, University of San Diego, San Diego (June 24)

  2015 “The Anti-Imperialist Vision of Dr. Jurj Habash, Dr. Wadi‘ Haddad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 1967-1970.” Imperial Visions, Hong Kong  University History Department International Graduate Symposium, Hong Kong (May 7)

  2015  “To ‘Shake the World’: Operation Revolution Airport or How to Uproot Imperialism from the Middle East, September 1970,” Insurgencies, Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies Graduate Student Conference, Northwestern University, Evanston (April 10)

  2014“Statements of Purpose: The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine And U.S. Empire in the Middle East, 1967-1970,” Buffet Center Colloquium, Northwestern University, Evanston (April 15)

  2013 “You May Not Unfasten Your Seatbelt: From the ‘Skyjacking Era’ to the ‘Age of Terror,’” Refiguring the 1970s: New Narratives in U.S. and International History, University of Chicago, Chicago (April 26-27)

  2013 “Confronting the Failures of ‘Modernization:’ Two International Conferences and the Invention of Reagan’s War against Terrorism, 1979- 1986,” International Doctoral Workshop on “Modernization and Social Change Bogaziçi University, Turkey (April 16-17)

  2012 “From Black September to the Arab Spring,” Change and Continuity in the Middle East: Rethinking West Asia, North Africa and the Gulf after 2011, London School of Economics Middle East Centre, United Kingdom (June 11)

  2012  “In Quest of the Goal: George Habash, Ilich Sanchez, and Abu Nidal in Confrontation with American Power, 1968-1986,” The Roles and Challenges of Diplomacy in the 21^st Century: Inclusion and Exclusion in a Globalized World, American Graduate School in Paris, France (April 19- 20)

  2010 “In Search of a ‘Moslem Billy Graham:’ The 1953 Colloquium on Islamic Culture in the Contemporary World and American/Middle East Relations,” War and Peace, University of Illinois, Chicago (April 16)

Comment

   2023  Middle Eastern actors and the Making of the Global Cold War, SHAFR Annual Meeting (June 2023)

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Wake Forest University 

     Americas in the World (Fall 2023)

     Americas in the World (Spring 2024)

     Disasters in the United States: From the 18th to 21^st Centuries (Spring 2024)

Drake University

      Colloquium on U.S. Interventionism (Spring 2021)

Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

      History of International Relations, 1900-1945 (Summer 2021)

      History of International Relations, 1900-1945 (Spring 2020)

      History of International Relations, 1900-1945 (Fall 2019)

      History of International Relations since 1945 (Fall 2019)

Northwestern University

      Global History 1750-Present, The Age of Carbon (Winter 2021)

      History of U.S. Foreign Relations (Summer 2020)

Global History of Terrorism (Spring 2019)

American Presidents and “International Terrorism” from Nixon to Trump (Spring 2017)

U.S. History from the Civil War to the Present (Winter 2017)

Ideas in U.S. Foreign Policy (Summer 2015)

History of Islamist Thought (Summer 2014)

American Presidents and “International Terrorism” from Nixon to Obama (Winter 2014)

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

History of the Modern Middle East (Spring 2017, Spring 2019)

History of Terrorism from Antiquity to the Present (Fall 2015/2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019)

COURSES PREPARED TO TEACH

The United States and the Middle East since 1945

Professional Team Sports in the United States

International Relations Theory and the Global South

Cultural Encounters of U.S. Empire

Bringing the War Home

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Rethinking the Significance of the Frontier in American History

Northwestern, Teaching Assistant

Law and Society (Fall 2016)

American Studies Senior Thesis Project (Fall 2015, Winter 2016)

American Cultural History, 1900-2014 (Spring 2014)

The Century of Modern Warfare, 1914-2010 (Spring 2012)

History of the Middle East—1789 to Present (Winter 2012, Spring 2011)

History of Terrorism from Ancient to Modern Times (Fall 2011)

Development of the Modern American City (Fall 2010)

RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS

2017-2018  Research and editing for Michael S. Sherry’s Go Directly to Jail: The Punitive Turn in American Life (UNC Press)

2021 Research and editing for Michael J. Allen’s Paradoxes of Power

LANGUAGES

English (native)

Modern Standard Arabic (advanced)

French (advanced)

Hebrew (intermediate)

Turkish (intermediate)

Farsi (intermediate)

PEER REVIEWER

British Journal of Middle East Studies

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

2011—Present American Historical Association

2013—Present Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations

2015—Present Middle East Studies Association

2017—Present American Studies Association