Joel R. Blatt
Undergrad college/major: Arts and Sciences/History.
Affiliations at Cornell: Freshman basketball and tennis, sophomore basketball team, Watermargin.
Advanced degrees:
PhD, European History,
Career/occupation: University History professor.
Honors and awards: Three times teacher of the year award, Univ. of Connecticut, Stamford Campus; year-long fellowship at the Univ. of Connecticut Humanities Institute, 2007-08.
Important affiliations: Board of Directors, Felice Lesser Dance Theater; member of the Nancy Lyman Roelker mentorship prize committee of the American Historical Association for three years including one as Chair; longtime membership in the Columbia University Seminar on Modern Italy (several years as chair).
Published work: A book, The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments, edited with an Introduction (1998 and 2000); a number of articles.
Marital status: Married.
Spouse: Felice Lesser.
Outstanding Cornell memory: People: great faculty who inspired me (Edward Whiting Fox, Walter LaFeber, Douglas Dowd, Alfred Kahn), great roommates and friends.
How has your life
differed from what you expected? A one year tour of duty
in the Army in
Cornell activities
post-grad: Freshman basketball and freshman tennis; 15th man on
a 15 man varsity basketball team my sophomore year. Mainly being a student. 1969-1970, Captain, U.S. Army in
Personal reflections: I remember most vividly the great professors who inspired me to become a history professor, roommates - friends, the beginnings of a social life, some basketball team experiences. In freshman English class we had an assignment to write a paper about an art exhibit at the campus art museum entitled (if I remember correctly), “Irrationalities in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Art.” I really got into the assignment, really let go and wrote what for me was a daring paper. Before the professor handed back the papers he read mine to the class. I was proud and there were audible sounds from my classmates. When he finished, he said, “I read this paper because it embodied every mistake that I had hoped to find.” Where I had emphasized content, he claimed that the exhibit was about form. To be sure, I knew nothing about form, but would have been better able to defend my point of view today.