[1] He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sturgis Leavitt Best Article Prize (1981,1987),[2] the Tanner Award for Inspirational Teaching of Undergraduates at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1980),[3] and the Harwood F.Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Prize for Teaching Excellence at Yale University (2017).
in 1969, with a major in History, from Colgate University, where he graduated as Class Valedictorian and Summa Cum Laude.
(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.
[11] In 2005 he finished an eleven-year term as director of Latin American and Iberian Studies.
[15] Joseph edited the Hispanic American Historical Review (with Stuart Schwartz) from 1997 to 2002,[16] and has served on the editorial boards of historical journals in the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela, and the U.K.[17] 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.