James L. Gelvin

In 2015, the Middle East Studies Association honored Gelvin with its Undergraduate Teaching Award, citing his “outstanding commitment to the practice and substance of undergraduate teaching, through his classroom performance, his training of future generations of undergraduate teachers, and his well-received undergraduate textbooks....James Gelvin’s accomplishments as a teacher and the teaching materials he has produced for others exemplify the kind of undergraduate teacher this award is meant to recognize." Gelvin also received the Faculty Excellence Award, presented by the UCLA chapter of Mortar Board National Senior Honor Society in 1998.

Gelvin earned his B.A. from Columbia University in 1983, M.A. from the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University in 1985, and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1992. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Gelvin taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston College, and Harvard University. He has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1999–2000) and the recipient of a U.C. President’s Fellowship in the Humanities (1999–2000). In 2002-3, he was Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Visiting Professor of History at the American University in Beirut.

James L. Gelvin (born February 12, 1951) is an American scholar of Middle Eastern history. He has been a faculty member in the department of history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 1995 and has written extensively on the history of the modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on nationalism and the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East.