Gilbert Joseph

Gilbert M. Joseph is an American scholar and writer.

Gilbert Joseph was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1947.

He received his B.A. in 1969, with a major in History, from Colgate University, where he graduated as Class Valedictorian and Summa Cum Laude.

In 1969–1970, he was a Fulbright Scholar in History at Monash University in Australia.

He received his M.A. (1972) and M.Phil (1974), before being awarded the doctorate from Yale in 1978, the year he became an assistant professor in Latin American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He received his doctorate from Yale University in Latin American history in 1978, where he is presently a Farnam Professor Emeritus of History and International Studies.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sturgis Leavitt Best Article Prize (1981,1987), the Tanner Award for Inspirational Teaching of Undergraduates at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1980), and the Harwood F.Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Prize for Teaching Excellence at Yale University (2017).

In 1993, after fifteen years on the faculty in Chapel Hill, he returned to Yale as a full professor; in 1999 he became the Farnam Professor of History and International Studies, a position he held until July 2021,when he became the Farnam Professor Emeritus.

Joseph edited the Hispanic American Historical Review (with Stuart Schwartz) from 1997 to 2002, and has served on the editorial boards of historical journals in the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela, and the U.K. He also co-edits (with Penny Von Eschen) the long-running book series "American Encounters/Global Interactions" for Duke University Press, which aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the imposing global presence of the United States and has published 70 titles since its inception in 1998.

To date, he has directed 55 PhD students (46 graduated from Yale, 9 from UNC-Chapel Hill).

Joseph won Yale's inaugural Graduate Mentor Award in the Humanities in 2000 and the Geoffrey Marshall Faculty Mentoring Award, bestowed by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools, in 2002.

In 2005 he finished an eleven-year term as director of Latin American and Iberian Studies.

Joseph presided over the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) from 2015 to 2016.

Joseph specializes in Modern Latin American history, particularly Mexico and Central America, and in US-Latin American relations.

He is the author of numerous academic works including books, chapters, book reviews, and articles, in his fields of research.

During 2015–2016 he served as president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

He presided over LASA's Fiftieth Anniversary Congress in New York City in 2016, and was a member of LASA's Executive Council and Strategic Oversight Committee from 2014 to 2020.