Joel Wolfe

Professor Wolfe received his B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico, and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He has published three books on modern Brazil. Working Women, Working Men: São Paulo and the Rise of Brazil’s Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955 (Duke University Press, 1993), which was named a Choice Outstanding Book for 1995; Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2010); and, Brazil (Polity, 2023) for the Polity Histories series.

At present, he is writing a book entitled, The American Game: Gridiron Football and the Making of a Modern Nation, which traces the long history of American football from the mid-nineteenth century to the present on the high school, college, and professional levels. He is also continuing work on a long-term project on trade, culture, and politics in the Western Hemisphere in the 1920s.

Awards And Accolades

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Fulbright-Hays Fellow
Choice Outstanding Academic Book
Residential First Year Experience Student Choice Award, UMass Amherst, 2009-2010
George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Rice University, 2003, 2004, 2005)

Courses Recently Taught

HIST 280 The History of Baseball
HIST 283 American Gridiron Football
HIST 121 Modern Latin America
HIST 359 Modern Brazil