Elizabeth Cobbs is an American historian, commentator and author of nine books including three novels, a history textbook and five non-fiction works. She retired from Melbern G. Glasscock Chair in American History at Texas A&M University(2015-2023), following upon a four-decade career in California where she began working for the Center for Women’s Studies and Services as a teenager. She writes on the subjects of feminism and human rights, and the history of U.S. foreign relations. She is known for advancing the controversial theory that the United States is not an empire, challenging a common scholarly assumption. She asserts instead that the federal government has played the role of “umpire” at home and abroad since 1776.
She is also credited as a screenwriter on the film adaptation of her book American Umpire, as a producer on the film adaptation of her book The Hello Girls, and as a screenwriter and producer of the public television documentary CyberWork and the American Dream: The History and Future of Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
Biography
Elizabeth Cobbs was born on July 28, 1956 in Gardena, California. Cobbs studied literature at the University of California, San Diego and graduated summa cum laude in 1983. She earned her M.A. and PhD in American History from Stanford University in 1988. While at Stanford, she won the David Potter Award for Outstanding History Graduate Student. Following graduation, she won the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians for the Best Dissertation on U.S. History.
She taught nine years at the University of San Diego, becoming chair of the History Department, and then accepted the Dwight E. Stanford Chair in American Foreign Relations at San Diego State University. She has been a Fulbright scholar in Ireland and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C and a Senior Fellow of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
Elizabeth Cobbs served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2008. She also served two terms on the Historical Advisory Committee of the US State Department from 1999 to 2006, advising on transparency in government and the declassification of top secret documents and transparency in government.
Professional background
Elizabeth Cobbs started her writing career at the age of 15 as a community organizer and publications coordinator for the Center for Women's Studies and Services in Southern California. During this period, she founded and headed several innovative projects for adults and young people supported partly by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. She received the international John D. Rockefeller Youth Award in 1979, at the age of 23 for her services to humanity.
Books and publications
Elizabeth Cobbs has written over 40 articles for media such as The Jerusalem Post, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Reuters, China Daily News, National Public Radio, Washington Independent, San Diego Union Tribune, The Washington Post, and several other publications. Her first nonfiction book was The Rich Neighbor Policy; she has since written five more books about American history and politics.
Cobbs also wrote and co-produced the PBS documentary American Umpire which is based on her book of the same name. It explores America's foreign policy "grand strategy" for the next 50 years.
Her first non-fiction book, The Rich Neighbor Policy, claimed the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians and also the Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil
Yale University Press published The Rich Neighbor Policy in 1992. The book focuses on the activities of the manufacturing and financial magnates, Henry Kaiser and Nelson Rockefeller, in Brazil. The pair transferred American technology and techniques to enhance the development of Brazil.
All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s
Cobbs' second book is based on the people and politics behind the Peace Corps, and discusses themes of American idealism at work during the difficult realities of the second half of the twentieth century. All You Need is Love was published in October 1998.
Major Problems in American History, Volumes I and II
Major Problems in American History, in two volumes, introduces college undergraduates to the major events and phases of American history. As co-editor with Jon Gjerde and later Edward Blum, Cobbs has edited four editions of the book 2002 (Houghton-Mifflin, Cengage).