Matthew Frye Jacobson is a professor of American Studies at Yale University. His work delves into the cultural history of the United States, particularly exploring themes of race, immigration, and American identity. Jacobson examines how these concepts have been shaped and transformed over time, and how they have influenced American society and its self-perception. His analyses are insightful, offering a fresh perspective on crucial aspects of American history.
A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr. Jacobson examines the complexities of his constraints, freedoms, and choices for what they reveal about Black history and American political culture
Morrissey is a figure cult. But what drives his fans devotion? What makes them trek halfway round the world to catch his shows in the US or South America when he is playing in their city a few months later? Why do they fight over pieces of his shirt, thrown each night into the crowd? Is this healthy? Should they seek help? Is Moz messainic or does he calculatedly whip the mob into a frenzy to maintain his status? And what of Morrisseys own adolescence and his obssessions with 50s rock n rollers and stars such as Bowie and Patty Smith. And what about the places of pilgrimage, venues such as Salford Lads Club or Southern Cemetry's gates. Why do these places give fans a special connection with their hero? Morrissey devotee (and proud owner of an intact Moz shirt) Matt Jacobson examines his own obssession and that of his fellow fans to discover the lengths some will go to, from risking physical injury to ending long friendships, to get closer to their hero.
In the 1970s, whites mobilized around a new version of the epic tale of plucky immigrants in the New World. Although this turn to ethnicity was for many an individual search for familial and psychological identity, Jacobson establishes a broader white social and political consensus responding to the political language of the Civil Rights movement.
In this work of historical imagination, Jacobson argues that race resides in contingencies of politics and culture. Linking whiteness studies to traditional historical inquiry, he shows that in a nation of immigrants, race has been at the core of civic assimilation-ethnic minorities, in becoming American, were re-racialized to become Caucasian.