Stephen G. Rabe Professor

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars, popularly known as the Fulbright Scholars Program, has chosen Professor Stephen G. Rabe to serve as the Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland for the 2005/06 academic year. The Bicentennial Chair is part of the Fulbright Program‚s Distinguished Chair Program. Each year, the Fulbright Program appoints approximately 30 professors from the United States to teach in its Distinguished Chair Program. The appointees teach in a variety of academic areas. Professor Rabe previously held a Distinguished Chair, serving in 1990-91 as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College, Dublin, Ireland. He has also directed the First and Second Seminars on American Studies in Brazil in 2003 and 2004.

At the University of Helsinki, Rabe will be associated with the Renvall Institute, which offers degree programs in North American and Latin American Studies. He will be offering courses on the history of U.S. foreign relations. Rabe will also be in residence at the Renvall Institute, living in a campus apartment. Professor Rabe is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S. foreign relations. His forthcoming book, The U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, 1953-1969: A Cold War Story, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2005.

About Professor Stephen Rabe...

Education: 
Ph.D., University of Connecticut, 1977
M.A., University of Connecticut, 1972
B.A., Hamilton College, 1970

Recent Publications:
Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World since 1945, 2001
The Most Dangerous Area in the World; John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America, 1999
The Caribbean Triangle: Betancourt, Castro, and Trujillo and United States Foreign Policy, 1958-1963

Biographical Information:
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from Hamilton College (B.A., 1970) and the University of Connecticut (Ph.D., 1977), Stephen G. Rabe is now a professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas. His field of research interest is in U.S. foreign relations, with a special interest in U.S. relations with Latin America. Rabe has written The Road to OPEC: United States Relations with Venezuela, 1919-1976 (1982) and Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (1988). He has also edited, with Thomas G. Paterson, Imperial Surge: The United States Abroad, The 1890s-Early 1900s (1992). Journals such as Diplomatic History, Irish Studies in International Affairs, Latin American Research Review, Peace and Change, Mid-America, and Presidential Studies Quarterly have published his scholarly articles. He has also written numerous book chapters, book reviews, and encyclopedia articles on U.S. and Latin American history. His new book-length study, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1999. Rabe has completed an extended essay on the foreign policies of John Kennedy for Debating the Kennedy Presidency, with James Giglio. Rowman & Littlefield will publish Debating the Kennedy Presidency in 2002. Professor Rabe is currently studying the history of U.S. involvement in British Guiana (Guyana) from 1953 to 1970.

Foundations and research institutes have supported Rabe's research. He has won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Historical Association, Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, Rockefeller Archive Center, and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute among others. Scholars have also recognized his work. The Southwest Council on Latin American Studies awarded him the Harvey O. Johnson Prize for his study on U.S. relations with Venezuela. Eisenhower and Latin America won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). In 1988, SHAFR also recognized Rabe with the Bernath Lecture Prize, which is given to the outstanding younger scholar working in international history.

Professor Rabe has lectured widely at home and abroad. In 1990-91, he received a Fulbright Fellowship and served as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College, Dublin, Ireland. In addition to teaching in Ireland, Rabe has lectured in Argentina, Northern Ireland, and Wales. He has commented on international relations on numerous radio and television programs in the United States.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, where he has taught since 1977, Rabe offers courses on U.S. foreign relations, U.S. relations with Latin America, the American Experience in Vietnam, U.S. history since 1945, and U.S. historiography. He also has a teaching field on slavery and has edited Slavery in American Society (1993), with Richard D. Brown and Lawrence Goodwyn. Rabe has taught perhaps more undergraduate students than any other professor in the history of the university. He has won three awards for distinguished teaching. For 1999-2000, Rabe was named the Kusch Lecturer, the highest honor the university annually bestows upon one of its faculty members. The Kusch Lectureship is named for Polykarp Kusch, Nobel Laureate and UT-Dallas Regental Professor of Physics from 1972 to 1982. Rabe's lecture, "Debate Without End: Vietnam Twenty-Five Years After" was delivered in February 2000 to a university audience.

A member of several professional organizations, Rabe has had a leadership role in SHAFR. He has served on the organization's Executive Council and has been on the editorial board of Diplomatic History.

Rabe is married, with one child. His wife, Genice A. G. Rabe, is an attorney specializing in labor law and employment discrimination. Stephen Rabe is also a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.