Robert Vitalis joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in July 1999 as associate professor of political science and director of the Middle East Center. He stepped down as Center director in July 2006. Penn promoted him to full professor in July 2008.
He is the author of four books. The first book, When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt, was published in 1995 and reissued by the University of California Press on its 25th anniversary. He continued to develop and expand the scope of his interests in historical comparative analysis in his second book, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, which was published in October 2006 by Stanford University Press and named a book of the year in the London Guardian. His latest work is Oil Craft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy