Susannah Jacob
Research interests:
20th-century history of the United States; telecommunications and regulatory history; political history; history of the Democratic Party
Bio:
Susannah Jacob is a sixth-year doctoral candidate in Modern U.S. History at Yale. Her dissertation, “Silicon Valley, the Democratic Party and the Creation of the Commercial Internet: 1982-2017” tells the history of the regulation of the commercial internet in the United States. She studies how Democrats in Congress, the White House and the Federal Communications Commission embraced the deregulation of telecommunications throughout the 1980s, and then remade the regulatory regime governing the commercial internet in the 1990s and beyond.
She is the recipient of the American Association of University Women Doctoral Fellowship. Her research has been supported generously by the Harry Middleton Fellowship in Presidential Studies, the Clinton Foundation Presidential Research Fellowship, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation Grant for Works in Progress and the New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship. In the spring of 2027, she will be the Instructor of Record for a seminar focused on the political history of the internet in the United States.
She is the recipient of the American Association of University Women Doctoral Fellowship. Her research has been supported generously by the Harry Middleton Fellowship in Presidential Studies, the Clinton Foundation Presidential Research Fellowship, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation Grant for Works in Progress and the New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship. In the spring of 2027, she will be the Instructor of Record for a seminar focused on the political history of the internet in the United States.
Her published writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Texas Tribune, The Paris Review, among others.
From 2014 to 2017 she worked as a White House speechwriter to President Barack Obama. She received her B.A. in History at The University of Texas at Austin.
From 2014 to 2017 she worked as a White House speechwriter to President Barack Obama. She received her B.A. in History at The University of Texas at Austin.