Prof. Joshua A. Enslen, Ph.D.

Professor Joshua Alma Enslen teaches courses in the areas of Portuguese as a second language and Brazilian literature in the Department of English & World Languages at the United States Military Academy (USMA). He also directs the department's World Languages division. He joined the USMA faculty in 2008.

Prof. Enslen earned a Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of Georgia (2008) and holds a Post-Doctoral Certificate of Studies from the Materialities of Literature Program at the University of Coimbra (2016). 

His early research focused on the historical connections between literature and diplomacy in Brazil, and he has published essays on important writer-diplomats such as João Guimarães Rosa, João Cabral de Melo Neto, and Vinícius de Moraes. His current research focuses on exploring, in visual and narrative modes, the intertextual influence of Antônio Gonçalves Dias’ “Canção do exílio” (1846), one of the most imitated poems in the world. His visual literary studies on the topic, created in collaboration with artist Alaina Enslen, have been featured in solo exhibitions at the University of Coimbra’s historic Museum of Science (2016), at FOLIO 2016 in Óbidos, Portugal, and the University of Lisbon’s Caleidoscópio (2017). 

His book “Song of Exile”: A Cultural History of Brazil’s Most Popular Poem, was published in 2022 as Volume 84 of Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures. 

At West Point, Prof. Enslen has served on many committees and, in 2016, received a Superior Civilian Service Award for his work as associate chair of the Curriculum Committee during a period of intense revision to the academy’s curriculum.