Meet Josh Emmott

Josh Emmott’s teaching career began with three years at New York City’s JFK High School at 225th and Broadway, just around the corner from Yankee Stadium (he’s not a Yankees fan, for those of you with inquiring minds).

Josh’s love of his subject—history—has a longer tenure: As a student at Northfield Mount Hermon School, he spent a semester in Egypt and became fascinated with Middle Eastern history, which is his specialty. After graduating from Wesleyan University, he completed a master’s in Islamic Societies and Cultures at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies; he then spent two years in Jordan as a Peace Corps volunteer, helping micro-enterprises market their wares.

His new home, which he shares with his wife (a doctoral student at Harvard) and their cat, is on the top floor of Wolcott House. Josh says that his first year on campus has been a good one: “My students are energetic and passionate,” he says. “I enjoy my colleagues in the history department. They are extremely intelligent and collegial. We regularly discuss how and why we teach what we teach.

“It’s a pleasure coming up with ideas to challenge students creatively,” says Josh, who teaches U.S. History and U.S. History in the Modern World (part I). In his U.S. History class, the focus is right now on the Great Depression. “We’re looking at issues related to security, liberty and freedom — at how FDR takes a crisis and changes the country’s idea of the relationship between government and the individual.” His other class is thick in the middle of research projects, which center on some aspect of history between 1300 and 1880.

“My teaching philosophy is evolving,” Josh says. “I’m moving away from teaching history chronologically; I’m taking more of a thematic approach and referring back to the Constitution as a framework.”

As a teacher in the Bronx, Josh taught AP U.S History and Honors Economics. He advised Building With Books (to help students help developing countries build schools) and founded JFK’s Model U.N. Club.

Josh also enjoys fly-fishing.

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