Assistant Professor of the Practice
Connolly House 210
300 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Telephone: 617-552-3824
Email: getzoff@bc.edu
Critical and postcolonial approaches to development; environmental history; political ecology of arid zones; nature-society approaches to race and indigeneity; comparative settler colonial studies; global and transnational colonial networks; Israel and Palestine; North America.
Joseph Getzoff is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the International Studies Program, and a cultural geographer whose research explores the intersections of human-environment interactions, comparative settler colonial contexts, and the global histories of development.
Joe received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct field research in Israel (2015-2017) for his doctoral dissertation, which interrogates the economic and environmental projects connected to state-led development in the arid Negev/Naqab desert. His work explores historical and contemporary economic and developmentalist narratives—such as found in the slogans, “make the desert bloom” and the “start-up nation”—that propel not only Israeli claims to land, but Israeli claims to progress and modernity. His work also focuses on how state-led developmental projects present several material and ideological challenges for Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of the Negev/Naqab, who have historical claims to the region.
Joe is interested in teaching and advising from a broad geographic perspective, focusing especially on uneven development, environmental politics, and qualitative research methods. Before joining the IS Program at BC, Joe was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Clark University (2020-2022), where he won the 2022 Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher of the Year Award. He has also taught at Worcester State University (2019-2020). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society in 2020.
Publications:
Getzoff, Joseph F. "Zionist Frontiers: David ben-Gurion, Labor Zionism, and Transnational Circulations of Settler Development." Settler Colonial Studies 10, no. 1 (2020): 74-93.
Getzoff, Joseph F. "Start-up Nationalism: The Rationalities of Neoliberal Zionism.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 58, no. 5 (2020): 811-828.
Getzoff researches the economic and environmental projects connected to state-led development in the arid Negev/Naqab desert of Israel. He also teaches the core course for International Studies majors entitled "Where on Earth: Foundations in Global Culture and Political Geography."