Teaching/Research

Joe Parrott is an historian of transnational affairs, international diplomacy, and U.S. politics. His work considers two main themes: the relationship between the Cold War and decolonization (especially in Africa), and how global affairs influenced competing definitions of the U.S. international mission after 1945. He also studies congressional influence on foreign policy, the practice of oral history, and how media (comics, posters, film, etc.) communicate political messages within popular culture and as propaganda.

Joe's most recent book, Dream the Size of Freedom (Pennsylvania, 2025), considers Portuguese decolonization in Africa as a noteworthy component in transforming western engagement with the Global South. It cuts across diplomatic, activist, and socio-political history to illuminate how questions of liberation and empire drove the policy choices of Western officials, African nationalists, and U.S. politicians, as well as the agenda of a wider American left. 

He earlier co-edited The Tricontinental Revolution with Mark Atwood Lawrence (Cambridge, 2022, Open Access), a major reassessment of the global rise and impact of the militant strand of Third World solidarity that defined the 1960s and 1970s as decades of rebellion. Tricontinentalism encouraged marginalized states and non-state actors from North Vietnam through South Africa to New York City to mount radical challenges to the United States as Cold War interventions highlighted the limits of decolonization and inspired expansive visions of self-determination.

Joe contributes to various media ranging from historical journals to podcasts. Highlights of his academic scholarship include an overview of relations between the United States and Southern Africa for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia; an open-access chapter on how the 1961 invasions of Goa and Angola reshaped United Nations politics; and an article on the US-Mozambican film A Luta Continua, which he helped digitize. Public History efforts include a digital exhibit with WGBH on 1970s Pan-Africanism in Boston, a discussion of the United States and Decolonization on the 15 Minute History podcast, commentary on depictions of the Cold War and Angola in the video game Black Ops II for History Respawned, and a brief history of Captain America for OSU’s Origins.

Joe is currently working on two projects. The first considers transnational solidarity with the minority governments of southern Africa. The second examines how depictions of threat and heroism in U.S. media ranging from comics to video games reflected and reiterated core assumptions about foreign policy during the "American Century."

Before coming to Ohio State, Joe taught at Yale University and the University of Texas, where he received his PhD in History and was involved with the Clements Center for National Security and Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. He previously earned a Master of Public Policy and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia and worked at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. 

Faculty Links

Curriculum Vitae 
Department webpage

Mershon Project

Who Doesn’t Want to Punch a Nazi: Popular Memory and the American Mission (2025-26)
Congress, Southern Africa, and Competing Ideologies of U.S. Foreign Policy (2019-20)
From Cabinda to Congress: African Decolonization and the Rise of a New Left Internationalism (2018-19)